BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union has approved a $7.8 billion bailout for Germany’s regional WestLB bank, which was rattled by it’s exposure bad U.S. debt.
The German regional bank had a net loss of 1.6 billion euros ($2.5 billion) last year, significantly higher than predicted because of the crisis. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia joined […]

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LONDON (MarketWatch) — British mortgage lender Nationwide on Wednesday said house prices fell for the sixth consecutive month, adding to the gloom over the U.K. housing market.
House prices saw a monthly decline of 1.1% from March, and were down 1% compared to April 2007, marking the first annual price decline since 1996. The drop brought […]

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NEW YORK - In a bad omen for sellers and lenders this spring home selling season, the erosion of house values is accelerating and foreclosure filings are doubling, new data showed Tuesday.
A closely watched index of home prices in 20 cities fell almost 13 percent in February from a year earlier, a record for […]

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Home prices in major US cities slumped an average of 12.7 percent year-to-year in February, a survey showed Tuesday in a sign of even deeper troubles for the ailing housing market.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of prices in 20 major cities showed a 14th consecutive month of declines, as the market meltdown […]

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Reuters - The share of vacant U.S. homes rose to a record level in the first quarter, the government reported on Monday, with homeowners finding it increasingly difficult to find buyers in a collapsed market and more homes in foreclosure.
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In recent months, Americans have learned that their mortgage payments — kind of like their airline luggage — can go places they never would have imagined. A loan in, say, Sarasota, Fla., can be bundled with others and sold as a mortgage-backed security to an institutional investor in, say, Singapore.
This process helped generate a housing […]

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AP - Consumer advocates nervous about Bank of America Corp.’s proposed takeover of troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. are pressuring the bank to provide assurances that Countrywide borrowers facing foreclosure won’t lose their homes.
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While homeowners already have felt the effects of the ongoing turmoil in the housing market, municipal officials in New Hampshire and Maine say they have yet to see any major financial fallout.
But they are watching the situation closely.
In Franklin, Mayor Ken Merrifield anticipates that his city’s 2009-10 municipal budget will be more challenging to put […]

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