The National Association of Realtors(R) commends President Obama for pledging to assist homeowners and the struggling housing market, because restoring the health of the housing market is critical for the nation’s economic recovery.

“As the nation’s leading advocate for homeownership and housing issues, NAR knows that stabilizing the housing market is key to the health of our economy and communities across the country,” said NAR President Moe Veissi, broker-owner of Veissi & Associates Inc., in Miami. “We are pleased that the President released a plan to help America’s struggling housing market and homeowners. Improving access to simple, low-cost refinancing and streamlining the process will help hardworking families who have stayed current on their mortgage payments and will go a long way to helping keep more families in their homes.”

Full story is available on MarketWatch

If a new home is in your sights, is now a good time to buy? Should you consider selling? Not clear on what to do in today’s housing market?

Three Intown professionals hope to set the record straight by schooling you on some of today’s myths regarding the current climate. They include Weslee Knapp, real estate consultant and managing broker, Keller Knapp Realty (kellerknapp.com); Dac Carver, vice president and managing broker, Beacham & Company (beacham.com); and Randal Lautzenheiser, managing broker, Atlanta Intown Real Estate Services (AtlantaIntown.com).

Full story is available on AtlanaInTownPaper

Not surprisingly, I’m going to have to agree with both Yale Economist Robert Shiller in this Business Insider interview and Barry Ritholtz at his Big Picture blog in arguing that a housing bottom – if it does indeed arrive in 2012 – will prove disappointing for those expecting gains on their real estate investment in 2013 or 2014.

As shown above using the mid-1990s Los Angeles housing market as an example of what might happen to national home prices in the years ahead, housing market bottoms are long drawn out affairs.

Full story is available on Seeking Alpha

President Obama lays out a new plan for tackling the housing crisis, but will it be more successful than prior efforts?

The president had only to cross the Potomac River to Falls Church, Va., to find plenty of foreclosures.

Full story is available on pbs.org

Banks are holding a jillion houses in their inventories, results of abandonment and foreclosure. These buildings are deteriorating and cost the banks money, in security, taxes, and depreciation. Worse, these houses represent an oversupply which, when they are finally put out for sale, will depress housing prices even further. This will then depress the prices of inhabited houses and precipitate even more strategic defaults. Municipalities already face a declining tax basis on the inhabited ones. Property taxes are declining, with no floor in sight.

Full story is available on The Washington Times

As part of a strategy to improve the U.S. housing market, President Obama announced Wednesday a pilot program that would allow investors to buy in bulk large numbers of foreclosed properties currently owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The renewed focus on strengthening the housing market is critical if the overall economy is going to improve. Despite some positive signs at the end of 2011, the U.S. housing market continues to be a drag on the nation’s overall economic recovery.

Full story is available on The Washington Post

In Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s world, all he had to do was lower interest rates enough and housing prices would magically re-inflate.  Wrong!  Mortgage rates are at all time lows, home prices are at 2002 levels and owning a home is just as cheap as renting, yet the housing market remains mired in a depression. The folks at the Federal Reserve who created the housing bubble with super low rates and easy “no questions asked” mortgages are helpless to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Sales of new homes should be booming based on low home prices and ultra low interest rates – instead new home sales in 2011 were at the lowest levels on record.

Full story is available on Problem Bank List

The five most likely U.S. metropolitan real estate markets to recover in 2012 are demonstrating signs of economic recovery in at least a Miami, Florida couple of areas, despite the troubled U.S. economy. However, there are few other similarities aside from growing employment and a climate for change.

A sense of cautious optimism prevails in Miami, Florida where the real estate market is already rebounding. Home and condominium sales along with prices are climbing, with more sales to international buyers than anywhere else in the nation. However, it’s not all sunshine and roses in Miami, where high crime rates and a sense of a third world region in many areas of the metropolitan area could hurt the city over the long haul.

Full story is available on Housing Predictor

In his State of the Union address, President Obama unveiled a new plan for the struggling U.S. housing market. As described, the program would let responsible homeowners take advantage of record-low borrowing costs through refinancing. Host Scott Simon talks with New York Times columnist Joe Nocera about the president’s plans.

The future of the state of the U.S. housing market was a primary focus for the White House this week. On Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama unveiled a new plan to try to correct the housing downturn. It would allow qualifying homeowners the chance to refinance their mortgages at historically low rates.

Full story is available on NPR

Fewer people are buying and more people are renting — some by necessity and some by choice.

Information from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that 66.3 percent of Americans owned their own home in 2011, down from a high of about 69 percent in 2004.

Full story is available on OurMidland.com