Weekly Roundup: Rates are down, fraud is up

Here’s your chance to catch up with news included to inform, enlighten and perhaps even entertain you. To read about The Big Apple, check out the other of today’s posts and look for Out and About early next week.

Broadway producer makes a wicked good purchase in the San Remo

Dahlink, Hungarian refugee’s Bel Air mansion may soon be listed for $30 million

Number of  homeowners owing more than property’s worth swells to 28 percent

Prices drop 1.5 percent in March to 4.9 percent below 2009’s post-bubble nadir

Peak to 2009 trough prices plunge 36 percent but exceed last March by 1 percent

Rates decline for fourth straight week below

Housing market predictions are all over the lot

Prices, sales, mortgage rates in 2010? No one can know.

Especially at this time of the year, you’ve undoubtedly been taking in predictions of the future of the housing market (and I’ll bet you missed the pun in the headline).

Since the forecasts vary widely and invariably are equivocal, any confusion is understandable, even if the economists themselves often are not.

Quoting CNN Money, Realtor magazine listed these prognostications among many more that are available:

Stick out foot, aim gun, now shoot

Home construction leaped up 17.2 percent between April and May, largely because of a burst in the multifamily sector.  (Details in my next biweekly newsletter.)

Don’t start celebrating.