Home Front

Day in and day out since 2007, callers who struggle with mortgages throughout the Sacramento region, those who can't sleep for worrying, who want to stay with houses that have lost $150,000 in value, have phoned Home Front to fret and express a common sentiment.

New numbers released this week by the California Department of Corporations show the mortgage crisis is moving higher up the food chain.

Mortgage rates, rising quickly from near-historic lows earlier this year, are already having negative consequences in the capital region.

Painful as it is, all this housing distress has one advantage, says Joel Singer, executive vice president of the California Association of Realtors.

Europeans are making Sacramento a regular stop on media expeditions to the housing crisis that has been pounding their banks.

For all the pain and trouble associated with this housing bust, one thing is clear: It's getting better and better for first-time buyers.

California's 400-mile Central Valley and its largest metro area, Sacramento, are almost perfect poster children for housing boom excesses that doubled home values, then quickly shredded them in a torrent of foreclosures.

Somewhere in every human being resides the fantasy to own a huge, expensive showcase house – and big-time charities are pouncing all over it.

Struggling homeowners looking for help with mortgages might try a new online tool launched by Minneapolis credit scoring icon Fair Isaac Corp., better known as FICO.

Among people considering whether to keep renting or buy a house soon, the tough choice is always between historic low interest rates and falling prices.

The first quarterly report on new-home sales in the Sacramento area during 2009 is in – and there's one good sign amid a new low of 699 sales in January, February and March.

In area conversations about real estate it's often an act of faith that a widening gap between Sacramento and Bay Area home prices might soon spark a new migration east to buy houses cheap and put an end to free-falling prices here.

How many highly touted programs have we had that aim to curb foreclosures in Sacramento and the rest of America?

In January 2007, the Islands at Riverlake in Sacramento's Pocket was just five model homes and a legal challenge clouding the start of construction. Times have sure changed.

Real estate agents going into this new sales season without a Blackberry, iPhone or other personal digital assistant better get with it.

Renting has seldom looked so good as now, as homeownership is increasingly associated with instability and fear.

Major housewarming gifts worth thousands of dollars are piling up for Sacramento-area couples and singles who buy a house in 2009.

Home, sweet single-family home, is getting smaller as big national home builders compete with foreclosure pricing.

It's a long-standing gripe in the building industry: Elk Grove's 1,900-acre Laguna Ridge project had to jump through so many hoops that it opened too late for the housing boom.

Another venerable name in Sacramento-area home building is apparently on the ropes.

It's a new year in real estate, and a landmark for Philip Cates, a Modesto mortgage banker. He just sold his 100,000th statue of St. Joseph, helper of home sellers and a patron saint of patience.

Before there was a Seaside and Celebration, Fla., before Laguna West, now in Elk Grove, and before "smart growth" and "new urbanism," there was Heritage Wood Circle in Sacramento's Pocket.

So begins a new year in the Sacramento real estate market, remarkably making its case as the fourth straight year of a downturn.

Ruben Ramos, owner of a Marysville real estate office, is not apologizing even after his published comments encouraging troubled borrowers to walk away from their homes ignited spirited controversy. "I stand by what I said," Ramos said.