So you decided to sell you home. An agent or broker-associate has negotiated your listing agreement.

There is most likely a clause in your contract stating that the broker who employs your representative has the right to cancel your agreement within a certain number of days if the terms do not meet approval. This is because your contract to sell is actually between yourself and the broker.

Full story is available on OCRegister

New home sales in the United States rose by 1.3 percent in October to an annualized rate of 307,000 units, extending the recovery begun in September after four consecutive months of decreases, the Commerce Department said Monday.

Nevertheless, the increase was less than what analysts had expected, having forecast for October an annualized rate of between 310,000 and 320,000 units.

Full story is available on Latin American Herald Tribune

Fingers of blame can be pointed in nearly every direction for the country’s current foreclosure crisis.

Let’s start with too many overzealous homebuyers and greedy mortgage lenders who issued too many risky loans. Then there’s the federal government, which promoted a naive expansion of homeownership through loose credit regulations, saturating the market with a glut of homebuyers who weren’t ready to make the biggest purchase of their lives.

Full story is available on dnj.com

Avid Law Center continued its fight for distressed homeowners in a recent lawsuit against Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and others involved in the alleged unlawful denial of the homeowner’s mortgage restructuring. The Orange County, California-based real estate and litigation law firm raised a number of potential legal violations, including improper securitization of the homeowner’s loan, the refusal to honor an originally granted loan modification, and loan servicer interference in contractual relations.

“We think it’s clear that our clients are prime candidates for the Making Home Affordable Program, they did everything asked of them by the banks. They initially had a trial modification granted to them, then, for some unknown reason, it was improperly denied,” said Timothy L. O’Reilly, senior trial attorney with Avid Law Center.

Full story is available on MarketWatch

Leave it to Silicon Valley to come up with a new idea for a struggling housing market desperate to revive the American Dream.

Jen O’Neal, with the help of her sister, decided to give the house their parents are selling a voice on Twitter. For those living under a rock, Twitter allows fleeting posts of 140 characters or less. It is arguably the furthest thing from interacting with a live, chatty real estate agent.

Full story is available on Housing Wire

If you live in Atlanta, San Francisco, or Tampa, the recent news was clearly not what you wanted to hear, but then you probably already know the dire situation in your housing market.

The key Case-Shiller 20-city Index showed these three metropolitan areas experienced the largest decline in home prices in September. Also consider that 17 of the 20 cities in the index witnessed price erosion in the housing market. The index fell 3.6%. The housing markets in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Phoenix are sitting at their lowest levels since the beginning of the subprime mortgage mess four years ago.

Full story is available on Wall Street Pit

The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes jumped in October to the highest level in a year. But the gain follows three months of declines and isn’t enough to signal a housing recovery.

The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday its index of sales agreements rose 10.4 percent last month to a reading of 93.3.

Full story is available on The Associated Press

Is now a good time to buy a home? What will the housing market be like in 2012? What does it take to get approved for a mortgage loan these days? These are some of the questions we receive every week from first-time home buyers. We have attempted to answer them all in this tutorial. It explains how to buy a house in 2012 — the smart way.

Objective: Many of the hardships associated with the housing crisis could have been avoided, if home buyers had access to better information. In this context, “better” means unbiased and factual information. That’s where we come in. We use our publishing reach to educate home buyers all across the United States. Our mission is to help people make better, more informed decisions. The following tutorial was born from this sense of duty.

Full story is available on homebuyinginstitute.com

The city has launched a new program to lure prospective buyers to areas of the city devastated by the foreclosure crisis.

The New York Daily News reported that under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program 2 Buyer Assistance Program, the city will use $4 million in funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide homebuyers in certain neighborhoods up to $50,000 towards a down payment on the home, and up to $30,000 more for minor repairs.

Full story is available on TheRealDeal

After slipping for three consecutive months, an index that tracks the number of U.S. home buyers signing contracts to purchase previously occupied homes jumped in October, reaching the highest level of this year.

The National Association of Realtors’ seasonally adjusted index for pending sales of existing homes increased 10.4% on a monthly basis to 93.3, the highest reading since November 2010, the industry group said Wednesday. October’s results were more than 9% above the same month in 2010.

Full story is available on The Wall Street Journal