Housing

by Anita Lee

A House bill to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program through September 2015 falls far short of reform the program needs for financial solvency, experts and politicians testified during a congressional subcommittee hearing Thursday.

by JIM ABRAMS

Many people trying to buy a house with a riverfront view were up a creek the past few weeks because of the temporary shutdown of the federal program that provides flood insurance.

Much was made of the thousands of workers losing their unemployment checks or their access to a federal health care program while the Senate took weeks to act on an $18 billion bill to extend, through the end of May or early June, several benefits programs that had expired.

by Alan Zibel

The number of homeowners in the Obama administration's flagship foreclosure prevention program is growing, data released Wednesday show. Yet it's not all good news.

About 231,000 homeowners have completed loan modifications through March. That's about 21 percent of the 1.2 million borrowers who began the program over the past year.

But another 158,000 homeowners who signed up have dropped out -- either because they didn't make payments or failed to return the necessary documents. That's up from about 90,000 just a month earlier.