Forget loan mods, low interest rates and scrapping Fannie and Freddie. As sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to their lowest level in 15 years, economist Gerald Celente says the only thing that will save US housing is a boom in American job creation. Celente's predictions have proved correct many times. He is credited with predicting the 1987 stock market crash, the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and the subprime mortgage bubble and bust.

"There's no double

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The Congressman who cosponsored the sweeping financial reform act told Fox News that he believes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be scrapped. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was asked by Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto what role Fannie and Freddie should play in housing markets.

"I think they should be abolished," Frank replied. "The only question is what do you put in their place. This is a situation where given the importance they had come to

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Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf tells Bloomberg that he likes a lot of President Barack Obama's 2,300 page financial reform bill which is now law. His bank has $1.2 trillion in assets.

“Too-big-to-fail has been dealt with,” Stumpf said. He explained that the creation of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a system-wide risk regulator will prevent crises caused by the collapse of a mammoth banks or lender.

Stumpf also said new consumer protection

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Most appraisers bear war wounds from this bleak economy and some have seen their livlihoods dwindle away completely. Finally, we have some good news to report to job-hunting appraisers; TSI Appraisal Services announced last week that it will hire more than 100 staff appraisers nationwide.

Troy, Michigan-based TSI has been recognized by Fortune as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" in America for four consecutive years. TSI says it facilitates more than 275,000

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Ward, June, Wally and Beaver Cleaver had little reason to venture into the dangerous big city because everything they needed was in their heavenly suburb. Even in the skanky world of Desperate Housewives, the suburbs seem shiny, bright, secure and prosperous. For decades, suburbs were the place city dwellers fled to once they were rich enough to leave the crowded, crime-prone city. But according to a Brookings Institution research report, almost one third of all of America’s poor now live in

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Click on Los Angeles and the map looks like a red planet exploding. The red lines indicate residents who are leaving LA, mostly for Texas and North Carolina. Black lines indicate residents moving into a county. Here the black lines show you that New Englanders are moving to LA in modest numbers.

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Recently, several banks conducted research linking unemployment to foreclosure. The response most Americans may have is, “Well, duh.” But the point the banks were making is, subprime loans are no longer the reason most Americans cannot afford their mortgages; losing a job is.

At the REO Expo in Dallas yesterday, RealtyTrac explained the math. For every one to six Americans who lose their jobs, there will be one foreclosure. Being unemployed, not being underwater, is what puts a home

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Owning a home of one’s own is no longer the American Dream for almost half of this nation. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling said 49% of Americans responding to a survey believe they will never be able to scrape together the 20% down payment to buy a home. Homeowners once had faith that if they had to sell their house, the value would raise enough to cover their down payment on a new home. Now, no one knows when home values will go up.

Only 12% of respondents said they

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What makes a city’s housing market a hopeless case? According to Business Insider, it takes a witches’ brew of rocketing unemployment, plunging property values and no white knights (such as a huge company ready to inject jobs and cash into the town) anywhere in sight. Crunching numbers from the National Association of Realtors into local unemployment statistics, the Business Insider came up with this list of 13 cities where housing values will never recover. Do you agree

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CNN is reporting that BP has, as of yesterday, paid a total of "$75,725 to start settling some of the 446 claims against it for lost income on area rental properties. BP disbursed another $5,000 to cover real-estate sales losses.”

That amount is tiny compared to the more than $40 million in damages BP has paid so far on about half the 32,000 loss of income claims filed. Those claims come mostly from fisheries, tour boats, seafood wholesalers and other small businesses along the Gulf

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National unemployment stats put us squarely in a recession. But for the second quarter this year, the mortgage industry increased its hiring according to First-Quarter 2010 Mortgage Employment Index from MortgageDaily.com. Florida got the bulk of the new mortgage jobs.

Look closer and you see it’s a bit of a tradeoff. “Lenders, banks and service providers terminated more than 1,500 mortgage-related employees in the first quarter… But the sector also added more than 2,200

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