Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to a record low for the second straight week, causing refinancing applications to surge to the highest level in more than five years.

One bank is playing Santa for 500 lucky homeowners in this season of foreclosures and sinking home values — a gesture paid in part by employees forgoing their office party.

Amid the mortgage meltdown, Jacksonville, Fla., legal aid attorney April Charney has become a top expert in foreclosure defense. Mostly, she says, lenders have hung themselves.

Walking away from a mortgage has always been a homeowner's last resort, but more may choose to do it as home prices continue to fall.

Vickie Lewis of Jacksonville, Fla., has been living in foreclosure limbo for more than four years. But she does not fit any stereotypes of today's troubled borrowers. Msnbc.com's Mike Stuckey reports.

Courtney Scott's effort to save her modest Georgia home is a small example of the problem facing anyone who wants to craft a broad solution to the problem of rising foreclsures.

A new surge in defaults and foreclosures is likely in 2009 and 2010 as as risky "pay option" mortgages reset to sharply higher monthly payments.

Fannie, Freddie executives ignored warnings they were taking on too many risky loans long before the housing market plunged, according to documents released at a House hearing.

Pending U.S. home sales fell slightly in October, amid a spate of bad economic news and turmoil in the stock markets, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.

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