Housing
With more than 80,000 Nevada properties in some stage of foreclosure, the Nevada Supreme Court for the fifth time in 16 months will tweak the rules of its mediation program, which is intended to bring borrowers and lenders together.
Emotional testimony from a man whose friend recently took his own life at Western High School punctuated his call Friday for action by lending institutions and government policymakers to come up with a realistic solution to the housing foreclosure crisis.
Las Vegas home sales dropped 26.5 percent in October from a year ago and inventory climbed 7.5 percent, an indication the housing market will end the year more sluggish than usual.
The U.S. Department of Justice has given Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto’s office a $1.7 million grant to expand services addressing mortgage fraud and vacant-property crimes. Masto’s office will add four investigators and two prosecutors to a mortgage-fraud unit that already has three investigators and three prosecutors.
The collapse in housing prices is not simply a blip in the market, but a fundamental resetting of values underlined by high unemployment, slower income growth and a more conservative consumer who will be more likely to rent than buy, an expert for Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program says.
