The House passes repeal, but bill differs from Senate version, so no resolution yet

The House Financial Services Committee last week moved to cancel two new Obama administration mortgage programs. The Republican-led committee voted 33 to 22 for the cancellation, the Wall Street Journal reported. The voting followed party lines.

Bank regulators are backing a rule that would require a 20 percent down payment on lower risk mortgages that would be exempt from new lending rules.

All-cash buyers accounted for 30.9 percent of home and condominium sales in California in January, with even higher percentages in some wealthy Southern California communities. The trend is likely the result of both low home prices and an increase in foreclosures on the market.

Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the economy and the housing market according to the results of a Fannie Mae survey.

Knauf Insulation has filed a patent infringement action against CertainTeed Corporation today in the Federal District Court in Indiana.

Sales of newly built single-family homes decreased 12.6 percent in January to a seasonally adjusted 284,000 units, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development. Regionally, new-home sales fell in both the South and West, while the Northeast saw a gain of 54.5 percent.

Existing home sales rose for the third month in a row in January, rising above sales levels from one year ago, according the latest data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

The National Association of Realtors may have over-counted home sales as far back as 2007. According to NAR, 4.9 million homes were sold in 2010, down from 5.2 million sales in 2009. But real-estate analytics firm CoreLogic estimates that only 3.3 million homes were sold in 2010.

Nationwide housing affordability reached record levels in the last quarter of 2010, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index. According to the report, 73.9 percent of homes sold in the fourth quarter of last year were affordable to families earning the national median income of $64,400. This is the highest affordability level in the index’s 20-year history.