The typically optimistic trade group touted the fact that sales of existing homes rose 11.4% from the second quarter. The NAR attributed that growth to the home-buyer tax credit and said that the decline in home prices - which has fed the foreclosure crisis - is moderating. “Foreclosures will continue to come on the market, but rising sales from the expanded tax credit should stabilize home prices by next spring and help to stem future foreclosures,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun in a statement. As readers of this blog know, the NAR has been among the most vocal proponents of the tax credit.

Still, median home prices continued to decline, falling in 123 of 153 metro areas compared with the same period last year. The national median home price came in at $177,900–11% below the third quarter last year.

The steepest price drop: Median prices in boom-to-bust market Fort Myers, Fla. fell 40% from last year to $98,000. Prices in Las Vegas, which also saw rampant construction during the bubble, plunged almost 35% to $138,500.

Click here to download the full list showing home prices in 153 metros.

The decision was a setback to struggling borrowers who have turned to the courts in an effort to get help under the Obama administration’s housing rescue plan. On Tuesday, the administration said that more than 650,000 borrowers had begun trial modifications under the program. But some borrowers complain that they are being denied aid by their mortgage company, even though they qualify for help under the program. So far, the results of those efforts have been mixed.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota and sought class action status, alleged that the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention plan violated borrowers’ constitutional rights because homeowners who were denied help under the program weren’t given a written denial and an opportunity to appeal. The action sought to halt foreclosures on homeowners eligible for the Obama plan until the government put in place certain procedural safeguards, such as creating a formal appeals process.

In a decision Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Montgomery said that Congress did not make loan modifications an entitlement. In addition, the Treasury Department gave mortgage companies some discretion in evaluating borrowers for help, the decision said.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed,” said Mark Ireland, an attorney for the borrowers in a statement. “We’re going to take time to review the court’s decision and then decide the next steps, including whether the decision can be appealed.”

Mr. Ireland, an attorney with the Housing Preservation Project, said that the administration has taken several steps to improve the process since the lawsuit was filed. In October, for instance, the Treasury Department issued guidelines that require mortgage companies to provide borrowers a written notice of denial within 10 days. Earlier this month, it required that mortgage companies stop foreclosures when a borrower challenges the denial and provides specific denial information, including some of the data used to evaluate the borrower for help.

Everett Collection

An ad for new homes from the 1930s.

The housing crash has certainly erased much of the excitement over homeownership, and many people continue waiting out the downturn by renting. But could this be a permanent shift away from white picket fences? That’s something Americans are debating.

One private home builder worries that longer-term renting might not end once the market recovers.

“I see a psycho-social shift in attitudes about home ownership. People now no longer believe that the ‘American Dream’ of home ownership is accessible, or even a good investment,” the mid-Atlantic builder tells Citi analyst Josh Levin for a client note. But “they also have not reconciled themselves to becoming permanent renters. Clearly, the market is in flux.”

The builder wonders if a new product or market will emerge, such as rent-to-buy or long-term leases: “People do not want to live in six-month cycles (typical lease), but they do not want to make the 30-year commitment to a sinking fund investment either.”

Readers, how has your opinion of renting and owning changed?

Las Vegas’s woes are well-documented. But for those casino operators in America’s heartland, the picture’s been different. These folks aren’t as vulnerable to the weaknesses in non-gaming areas such as lodging, fine dining or air travel. It’s been easier getting locals to while away their time at nearby gaming tables. Still it’s a fragile time: If the economy doesn’t get you, something else might trip you up. Take regional gaming operator Pinnacle Entertainment Inc. and it’s now-former chief executive Dan Lee.

On Monday, Mr. Lee abruptly resigned as chief executive of Pinnacle while he is being investigated by Missouri regulators for alleged verbal threats against a local politician.

Pinnacle’s official line Monday was that Lee resigned to “pursue other business interests.” Nonetheless, most industry experts say a flap last week with St. Louis County Council* Member Steve Stenger forced Mr. Lee’s exit. Mr. Lee was highly regarded as a visionary on Wall Street and his departure is seen as a loss for the company even though Pinnacle’s stock closed up 4.1% to $9.08 amid a broad market rally.

Mr. Lee is accused of making verbal threats to Mr. Stenger after he voted to approve a zoning law that would potentially allow another casino development to compete with Pinnacle in the St. Louis market, confirmed LeAnn McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Gaming Commission. She said the investigation will continue despite Lee’s resignation.

A representative from Mr. Stenger’s office wasn’t immediately available for comment.

According an article in the St Louis Dispatch, after Mr. Stenger’s vote, Mr. Lee ran towards the dais and said he “made the worst move in his political career.”

Lee later apologized to the councilman. Las Vegas-based Pinnacle has a second casino development project under construction in the St. Louis area, dubbed River City. The opening of that development is contingent upon final approval by the Missouri regulator.

Some analysts said Lee’s exit could be positive for the shares. Joseph Greff, a JP Morgan analyst, said in a report that amid a leadership transition, the board may decide to halt or alter the timing of two projects in Louisiana. This “could allow [Pinnacle] to be more of a net free cash flow generator, especially as it seeks to extend its revolver,” Greff said.

Pinnacle said board members Richard J. Goeglein and John V. Giovenco were named interim nonexecutive chairman and interim chief executive respectively.

*Correction: An earlier version of this post said that Mr. Stenger is a member of the St. Louis City Council. That was incorrect. He is a member of the St. Louis County Council.

Lone Star Cuts Fees to Seed Funds (WSJ): John Grayken, head of real-estate private-equity giant Lone Star Funds, is doing what once would have seemed outlandish: Cutting some of his fees by more than 50%.

Beazer Posts Quarterly Profit (WSJ): Beazer Homes swung to a $33.8 million profit in its fiscal fourth-quarter on a gain from repaying debt early as home builder’s orders rose and margins improved.

MBIA Reports Narrower Loss (WSJ): MBIA’s loss narrowed slightly as losses in the insurance business were greater than expected and the housing downturn continued to cause asset losses.

Attack of the Home Buyers’ Tax Credit (NYT Economix): One reason to fret about federal anti-recessionary fixes is that they often last long after the crisis that justified their creation.

FHA Reserves Are Low (Washington Post): The Federal Housing Administration has burned through its cash reserves and could soon wind up with what amounts to an automatic taxpayer bailout if fortunes don’t improve.

Deutsche Bank estimates that the first-time home buyer tax credit worth up to $8,000 cost around $43,000 per home buyer, or around $15 billion for the estimated 350,000 home buyers who wouldn’t otherwise have purchased a home without the tax credit. The report estimates that just around 5% of all sales through mid-October wouldn’t have happened without the tax credit (or around one in five of the 1.4 million home buyers who filed for the tax credit through mid-October).

Still, analysts figure that the expanded income limits in the new credit, which went into effect on Saturday and gives existing home buyers a $6,500 credit, could translate into another $150,000 in purchasing power and that an $800,000 cap on homes eligible for the credit will exclude only around 3% of all homes.

The report notes that while the tax credit hasn’t created the boost for home sales that “some euphoric headlines would imply,” analysts “can’t dispute that it has been meaningful in bolstering consumer psychology and general housing market sentiment.”

The report concludes: “While the actual impact on sales numbers may be relatively light, the impact on consumer psychology, and that second-order impact on the housing market, could be meaningful, and should serve to take a worst-case scenario off the table, at least over the next several months.”

The impact of the credit is also likely to have uneven results geographically: an $8,000 credit in Cleveland, for example, offers buyers around 9.8% off of the median home price, while the same credit only goes for around 1.7% of the price in Honolulu.

In other markets, a glut of bank-owned property may offset any demand stimulated by the credit, including Miami and Fort Myers, Fla., where more than one-third of homes are in some stage of foreclosure: “Because this particularly policy tool is a blunt instrument, its application will be uneven when applied to different markets that have very different home price levels and degrees of economic stress.”

The National Association of Realtors announced Monday a plan to give more data to real estate agents eager to show they can still provide valuable information at a time when more and more home shoppers rely on the Internet to bone up on the market.

The trade organization said it has acquired licenses for property-related data and related technology from Lender Processing Services Inc., or LPS. Terms weren’t disclosed, but NAR officials said in a presentation to members last week that they were investing $12 million in assets from LPS and its Cyberhomes unit.

The data are to feed a service called Realtors Property Resource, to be launched in next year’s second quarter and available only to the 1.2 million members of the trade group. It will include such information as past sales prices, tax assessments, zoning restrictions and liens on more than 147 million properties across the U.S., the Realtors said. The service also will include software to estimate the market value of homes.

The NAR hopes to build a profitable business by selling home-value analytical tools to Wall Street firms, federal agencies and other parties.

When shopping for homes, many consumers consult such Web sites as Zillow Inc.’s Zillow.com or Tree.com Inc.’s RealEstate.com to get a sense of the housing market and data on specific properties. The new Realtor service is aimed to helping Realtors make a case that they have information that consumers might not be able to find on the Internet.

The Realtors hope to persuade local multiple-listing services to provide more information on homes to be included in the Realtors Property Resource, said Jeff Young, an NAR official working on the project. There are around 900 multiple-listing services across the U.S. and most are owned by local Realtor organizations or brokerage firms. They provide data to real estate agents on homes listed for sale.

The Realtors also are preparing to launch a new Web site to provide housing information to consumers, called HouseLogic.com. Details of that service are due to be announced Thursday at the Realtors’ annual convention in San Diego.

Demand for real estate data appears strong. A spokeswoman for Zillow said an average of 8.3 million people have visited that site each month this year, up 62% from a year earlier.

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In the boom times, requesting a rent reduction before the lease expires might have been greeted by laughter. But these are tough times for landlords: Increasing unemployment is forcing tenants to double up, move home or find cheaper digs, pushing the vacancy rate to its highest level in 23 years.

That’s making landlords more willing to offer cash-strapped tenants deals: More than two-thirds of smaller, independent landlords will reduce rents, while nearly one-third already have in the last 18 months, according to a recent survey from the National Association of Independent Landlords.

It’s not just a token amount. Of those willing to negotiate, 61% would shave rent by up to 5%, while 29% would slash it by as much as 10%. A handful of those remaining would consider even steeper discounts, the survey of nearly 500 landlords last month found.

As the market increasingly favors tenants, landlords are focusing on keeping existing clients, offering everything from flat-screen televisions to cash to get them to ink another lease. The goal is to prevent an empty unit that brings in no rent for several months, or a new tenant who locks in a bargain rate for a year or more.

If your rental contract isn’t up, the chances of scoring free money or a TV are slim-to-none. But landlords - many themselves paying a mortgage - understand the benefit of being flexible.

“Often if renters can’t pay all of their rent, they don’t pay anything at all–hoping the problem will just go away–but that strategy of avoidance just compounds their troubles, hurts their credit rating and adds to their stress level,” says Tracey Benson, the landlord group’s president. “Landlords today understand what’s going on. They don’t want an empty home any more than a renter wants to be asked to leave.”

Explain your situation and your desire to stick around. If tugging the heartstrings isn’t enough, rely on data to negotiate. Research the neighborhood to figure out how many units are empty and what apartments like yours are commanding.

Play up your positives: Rental history, solid credit rating and stable employment. Never been late with rent? Point that out. Offer to pay the monthly tab electronically, guaranteeing the landlord quick, on-time payment. Another idea is to suggest inking a new lease, which would guarantee the landlord a full apartment for longer.

To be sure, deals are more likely with mom-and-pop operators. Public companies, whose rental and vacancy rates are closely watched by Wall Street, are less likely to bargain mid-lease. Still, it can’t hurt to try.

The state’s notice suggests that the company has run into problems funding timely closings of mortgages. The regulator said that Lend America had failed to put in place adequate internal controls to make sure that mortgages were settled properly after seven Connecticut borrowers over the past year had difficulty securing the proper payoffs to their old mortgage lenders once they refinanced through Lend America.

A company spokesman called the temporary cease and desist order an “unfortunate development” and said the company was working to resolve the matter quickly.

This isn’t the first time that Lend America, known for television advertisements appealing to borrowers to refinance into mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration, has run afoul of regulators. The company was reprimanded earlier this year by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the FHA, for misleading advertising that improperly used the FHA’s logo in marketing materials.

The Justice Department last month filed a civil fraud suit against the company and detailed 40 instances of abuse, including fabricating borrowers’ incomes so that they would qualify for FHA-backed loans. The government is seeking $14 million in claims, but a judge last month ruled against the government’s request to grant a temporary restraining order against that company that would have immediately barred it from originating FHA-backed loans.

The government is also arguing that the company misrepresented the activities and criminal background of Michael Ashley, the company’s main TV personality whose official title is “chief business strategist.” Mr. Ashley, a race-car aficionado, two weeks ago sold the drag racing team that bears his name. He had acquired the team at the beginning of the year.

In its formal notice, the Connecticut banking department made clear that it plans to dig deeper into Lend America’s books. Regulators asked the company for certain company financial statements and for detailed loan information on all loans made to or loan applications from Connecticut borrowers over the past year.

Our story last week looked at how one Lend America borrower, Karen DeForte, ended up in default on the FHA-backed loan that she took out one year ago when she refinanced through Lend America. While Ms. DeForte said that an income reduction had made it nearly impossible to make her monthly payments, she also said that she had been forced to close her loan with Lend America twice, and that she had never received a copy of her completed loan paperwork. Lend America says that it followed FHA guidelines in closing the loan.

Even the Rich Treat Their Houses Like Piggy Banks (WSJ): Traditionally, the super-rich didn’t bother with mortgages, but that changed in the boom years — and it is still going on. Recent big-time borrowers include hedge-fund titans and baseball magnates.

Washington Writes Blank Checks for Housing (WSJ): Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are burning a huge hole in the Treasury’s pocket. But in return, the White House is getting the ability to provide immense support to the housing market with only limited interference from Congress.

Treasury Blocks Fannie Tax Credit Sale (WSJ): The Treasury blocked Fannie Mae’s proposed sale of roughly $3 billion in housing tax credits to Goldman Sachs and Berkshire Hathaway.

Freddie Posts Quarterly Loss But Doesn’t Need Aid (WSJ): Freddie Mac posted a $6.3 billion loss in the third quarter but for the second straight quarter didn’t require a taxpayer subsidy, though it warned the company will probably need injections of capital from the U.S. Treasury in the future.

Tax Refunds, Relief for Home Builders (WSJ): The new tax break for businesses signed into law on Friday will result in a windfall valued at hundreds of millions of dollars for the biggest home builders.