Quoted: Closed sales more than doubled year over year in five of the 29 areas into which the listing service divides King County. Three were on the Eastside: Kirkland, Redmond and West Bellevue/Medina. The Eastside's surge actually began in the fall, after a summer in which sales there stayed relatively flat compared with 2008 while sales began climbing in more affordable South King County and Seattle.

Although demand is still high for a good deal, like many short sales are, there is still not enough staff or good industry-standard policies in place to handle them efficiently.

Quoted: "There is a lot going on all at one time," said E. Robert Levy, the executive director of the New Jersey Mortgage Bankers Association. "It’s a very, very difficult problem no matter how you deal with it." Nationwide, the number of short sales increased by 22.4 percent to 30,766 in the third quarter of 2009, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Quoted: A discovery by researchers could be helpful against two painful and sometimes fatal diseases, dengue and chikungunya.

An artificial bolstering of the housing market via homebuyer credits, along with the very negative outlook of the options ARM mortgage market (the bulk of which will reset later this year and in 2011) are what make me most uncertain about a quick and smooth recovery.

Quoted: After an October surge in first-time homebuyers trying to finalize deals before the original deadline for the $8,000 tax credit, the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) index of pending home sales dropped 16% in November.

Quoted: Home prices in Seattle rose on a seasonally adjusted basis in October from September, the first increase in almost 2 ½ years, according to the closely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index.

Holy cow.

Quoted: Chinese officials misused or embezzled about $35 billion in government money in the first 11 months of the year, according to a national audit released this week.

The announcement is the latest indication of how widespread corruption has become among government agencies and how difficult it will be for Beijing to root it out.

This is exactly why vaccinations are necessary for public health. A sick person for a disease like measles, which is highly contagious, can infect many more innocent people - like infants, children and those with weak immune systems.

Quoted: Because most people in this area are vaccinated against measles, the risk to the general population is low, heath officials said. Persons who are unvaccinated, pregnant women, infants less than 6 months of age and persons with weakened immune systems are at higher risk if exposed to measles and should contact their health care providers promptly if they develop an illness with fever or an unexplained rash illness.

Quoted: In the past year (from October 2008 to October 2009), home prices in Seattle have fallen 12.4 percent, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which are monthly reports that track home prices in 20 major U.S. cities. The only U.S. markets with bigger declines during that time were: Las Vegas (down 26.6 percent), Phoenix (down 18.1 percent) Tampa, Fla. (down 15.2 percent), Detroit (down 15.1 percent) and Miami (down 14 percent).

Although the Fed is holding the rate low and steady, the mortage interest rate cannot stay low forever. It's going to continue a general trend of inching up, although it's still very, very low now and I think it will still be in the range of being low over the next 12+ months.

Quoted: The average fixed rate on a 30-year mortgage was 5.05% this week, up from 4.94% last week, Freddie Mac said Thursday. The last time rates ...