Sales of existing homes fell in 45 states during the October-December quarter, with metropolitan areas showing growing weakness, a real estate trade group said Thursday. ...more

February 15, 2008

Florida's attorney general is investigating Countrywide Financial Corp., a beleaguered California-based mortgage lender, for possible unfair and deceptive business practices related to its home loans. ...more

February 1, 2008

Countrywide Financial Corp. says Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties are among the riskiest communities nationwide in which to make mortgage loans. ...more

January 30, 2008

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Tuesday the Bush administration is exploring what would be a significant expansion of the program to help at-risk mortgage holders. ...more

January 9, 2008

Will this year be great, or will we see recurring economic themes from 2007? Predictions by industry experts point to an easing of the morass in the housing market but say insuring your home will still be a hairy proposition. On a positive note, Hillsborough County's cancer research center, the county's biggest economic development project, may start paying dividends. Meantime, the cost of energy will go higher, the state is reviewing sales tax exemptions and the local workforce should stay resilient despite ongoing economic crises. ...more

January 6, 2008

The Labor Department reported Friday that companies are still adding to their ranks - albeit at a slower pace - even with deepening troubles in the housing and credit markets.

Employers added a net 94,000 new jobs to their payrolls last month. That was down from a surprisingly strong gain of 170,000 jobs in October but was still sufficient to prevent the unemployment rate from rising. The jobless rate has held steady at 4.7 percent for three months in a row. ...more

December 7, 2007

President Bush is expected to announce today an agreement with major mortgage companies to freeze interest rates for five years for financially troubled homeowners - a plan advocates say will help forestall a major foreclosure crisis but some conservatives say amounts to a bailout of people who made bad financial decisions. ...more

December 6, 2007

Recent efforts to hammer out a proposal to temporarily freeze interest rates on certain troubled subprime mortgages have brought up an interesting quandary. Is it the government's job to intervene in what is in part a crisis wrought by greedy lenders and naive and imprudent borrowers? Agreed, the government should not bail out financial irresponsibility, but sometimes there's no alternative. Those opposed to any government initiative to rescue the market before 2 million loans adjust to a higher interest rate –– and borrowers are stuck with payments they cannot afford –– are forgetting that the ripple effect of not doing anything could seriously hurt the general economy. ...more

December 3, 2007

TAMPA - Suddenly, it seems that every charming, affable actor from the 1960s and '70s is pitching something called a reverse mortgage. ...more

November 17, 2007

For more than a year, insurance underwriter Robert S. Garcia Jr. falsified homeowners and motor vehicle insurance documents, leading clients to believe they had coverage when they did not, Pinellas County Sheriff's Office detectives said Friday. ...more

November 10, 2007