The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled on Thursday to question President George W. Bush’s nominee to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In mid-April, Bush nominated Steven C. Preston to head the nation’s largest government housing agency and replace Alphonso Jackson who resigned from the post in late March after facing accusations that he [...]

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has sued two real-estate brokerages, accusing them of receiving kickbacks for steering home sellers to a provider of hazard reports.
The suit, filed on Wednesday in the central district of California, seeks to recover “illegitimate profits” generated by “sham” joint ventures formerly operated by Realogy Corp., Prudential California [...]

The Austin City Council voted not to limit the height of a proposed luxury condo in Downtown Austin. The council approved the requested 400 feet the developer was asking for.
The proposed high-rise condo will built behind Katz’s Deli. Opponent had asked the council to limit the condo size to 120 feet.
City Council also [...]

Home buyers have a new reason to be wary in this weakening housing market: Real-estate agents increasingly have lucrative incentives to push one home over another.
Slow sales have prompted builders and some individual sellers to offer unusually generous incentives to agents whose clients buy a home. Sellers normally pay the buyer’s agent 2 percent to [...]