The American Dream of home ownership has taken some hits in the recession. But it remains alive and well, though with some twists that will help shape the nature of the budding housing recovery.
First, the good news: The real estate market has clawed its way back from the brink and is about a third of the way to a normal, pre-bubble market. The bad news: It’s going to take until the end of 2015 to get us the rest of the way, and recovery could take even longer [...]
It’s now officially a lost decade for home prices. With the release of the January data for the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes, prices in a national composite dropped 3.8% from a year before, rolling back to the levels of early 2003.
By most conventional metrics, it appears the U.S. economy is improving: jobless claims are down, consumer confidence is up and the stock market appears stable. But if you find some of that economic data baffling or are just looking for reasons to feel good about the economy, maybe some different measurements are in order. Here are six unorthodox ways of judging how the economic recovery is doing.
Millionaire households in the U.S. are rising again, largely because the mass affluent stayed the course with their stocks during the downturn and are reaping the benefits of the market’s recovery. But frugality also played a big role.
While experts continue to warn that housing has not yet hit bottom, a slew of indicators suggest otherwise. The latest is a stellar quarterly earnings report from Home Depot, which is benefitting from hopeful owners sprucing up for the spring selling season.
On the most recent season debut of American Idol, viewers watched as a 24-year-old from Tennessee named Amy Brumfield won a golden ticket to Hollywood. Besides her soulful rendition of an Alicia Keys song, what made Brumfield stand out from the pack is that she lives in a tent in the woods with her boyfriend [...]
According to U.S. Census data, 48.6% of the population lived in a household that received some form of government aid in the second quarter of 2010, which rose slightly from the previous quarter — another sign of how dependent on federal aid Americans have grown during the Great Recession.
Shares with above-average yields and rising dividends may well offer the best returns in 2012.
The U.S. Mint circulated more quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies last year. And that’s a good thing. Coin shipments from the Mint finally increased — by 37%, which means that less people are digging around their own homes for dimes and nickels.
Companies are hiring again. That’s the good news. The bad news is those hires might not be coming fast enough.
