In the contentious debate over whether to reduce or eliminate the home-mortgage interest tax deduction – or leave it alone – one fact has been virtually unchallenged: The popular write-off used by millions of American owners costs the government massive amounts of revenue, somewhere in the range of $100 billion a year. more

Call it the political elephant in the room: 1.2 million families across the country are now at some stage of foreclosure, 3.8 million homeowners have been foreclosed upon since September 2008, 11.4 million are underwater on their mortgages, $6.5 trillion in home equity has been lost by owners since 2005, home building and sales are intimately linked with job creation, yet the subject of housing policy was virtually a no-show in either the Democratic or Republican conventions or in the party platforms. more

Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee and U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse joined Omni Development Corp., WinnDevelopment and Rhode Island Housing on Monday to celebrate the opening of 83 new or completely rebuilt rental homes in Providence’s West End. more

Construction hiring surged in February by the most in almost six years, highlighting the benefits to the U.S. economy from a revitalized housing market. more

The traditional wood clapboards, wrap-around front porches and narrow, peaked roofs in the proposed Palmer Pointe affordable-housing project in Barrington haven’t eased neighborhood concerns about the development. more

Could rental houses owned and managed by deep-pocketed hedge funds and big investors be the post-bust steppingstones to homeownership for huge numbers of renters? more

Home equity is back! And it’s growing fast: According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve, Americans’ net equity holdings in their houses jumped by nearly half a trillion dollars during the last three months of 2012, and have increased by $1.7 trillion since the spring of 2011. more

When the federal government repossessed the Medina Village apartments off Cranston Street in Providence’s West End in 2010, there was a real possibility the 22 vacant and decaying buildings in the complex would be abandoned. more

Overall mortgage activity reached a five-year high in Massachusetts in 2012, with refinance mortgages dominating 83 percent of the market share, according to new data from The Warren Group’s Mortgage MarketShare Module. more

Americans signed fewer contracts to buy previously owned homes in February, indicating a pause in momentum for an industry that is helping power the economy. more