Good news for the economy: The state’s jobless rate fell to 8.2 percent last month as local employers added 15,400 new jobs to payrolls.
OK, so the unemployment rate is still historically high. But it’s an improvement. The ripple effects of 15,400 new jobs will be felt across all sectors — including housing.
Bottom line: More, please.

Over the weekend both political parties were appearing on the Sunday news programs, stating how their economic ideas (stimulus /extension tax cuts) has help added 190,000 new jobs in February. Don’t get me wrong this is good news. But here are a few things we must remember:
*We still have 13.7 million unemployed in America.
*2. 7 million  who have [...]

From today’s Wall Street Journal article “Banks Push Home Buyers To Put Down More Cash”:
The median down payment in nine major U.S. cities rose to 22% last year on properties purchased through conventional mortgages, according to an analysis for the Wall Street Journal by real-estate portal Zillow.com. That percentage doubled in three years and represents [...]

A new study on real estate price was conducted by MIT and CBRE Econometric Advisors. It addresses the question whether or not the current market is actually a “buy” market. A big “booooo” because Boston is missing from the detailed data! In any event, the answer is basically if you take the post 2002 bubble [...]

We can’t take credit for this idea — Scott Van Voorhis over at the Real Estate Now blog actually wrote about this earlier this week. The idea is that there’s positive news coming from the National Home Builders Association annual meeting in Orlando … and no one is really buying it. Maybe it’s because everyone [...]

One of the most interesting court rulings is expected soon is the Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling on the Ibanez case. The case may have some far-reaching consequences both in Massachusetts and for the entire country. The central problem the court will be grapling with is the validity of securitization of mortgages as they have been [...]

The credit monitoring bureau TransUnion said in 2011, if projections hold, the mortgage delinquency rate could fall from the current 6.21 percent to about 5 percent. That’s a big drop — but the prediction is for the end of 2011. Still, it’s not bad news. The company said it reviewed the credit records of 27 [...]

Steve Pearlstein at the Washington Post has some interesting points on foreclosures and how to sort this mess, both banks and borrowers must do the right thing
Listening to the fiery rhetoric about the mortgage mess emanating from politicians this week, you’d think that big bad banks were trying to foreclose on hundreds of thousands [...]

The new owner of the Fairmont Copley Plaza is planning a $20 million “refreshing” of the iconic 383-room hotel, including building a larger fitness center.
But here’s the other potentially more important news: That the nearly $100 million purchase deal happened at all, considering the still largely frozen credit and investment markets, and that an executive [...]

The quotes below are from a review of a new book by Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, called “Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy.” A sample:
The credit market—at least as regards to housing—was distorted by government policy, not by a sudden and mysterious escalation in “greed.” [...]