Despite the relative risk aversion most people associate with renting a house, the ever rising number of foreclosures has been hurting tenants, sometimes even harder than landlords. In most cases the tenants don't even know that the landlord has been failing to make payment until they receive the foreclosure or eviction notice on their front door. From there, the renter's rights vary from state to state with the protections generally being lackluster. To top off the need to quickly find a new place to stay as the bank takes ownership, many tenants are also out a month's rent and the security deposit.

One renter in Virginia lost $1,200 when her landlord was foreclosed on; a hardship which coupled with the loss of her roommate and access to transportation has left her 6 months pregnant living in a homeless shelter. Some states do provide protections which will allow the renters to pay the bank and live in the home until the new owner moves in but the extra time for tenants isn't usually long enough. In some other areas legal aides actually recommend living in the home rent free while the foreclosure process is completed in order to build up enough money for a new rental. No matter where you live the protections for renters from indiscriminate landlords are not good enough.

The House passed a measure last year which would afford more protection to renters in foreclosure cases but the measure hasn't yet been put into place. Congress needs to stop wasting time with credit card interchange fees and baseball steroid scandals and get on to passing something which I think we can all agree protects consumers. In these cases the foreclosures are especially sad because the displaced renters aren't the irresponsible ones; they have paid their rent and made the smart decision to not buy a home they cannot afford. Congress, quit carrying on about an energy plan for one day, leave your fly fishing trip early and get some protections passed. It'd be great if for once we could reward those individuals who made good decisions when it comes to housing.

One of my favorite real estate shows from a few years back was Bravo's Million Dollar Listing, which followed around top producing high end real estate agents in Malibu and Hollywood.

This season, the balance of newbies and seasoned veterans has been replaced with a cast of under-30 hotshots driving sports cars and selling homes to celebrities. The idea is probably to bring the show to a hipper audience, and, from the preview shown below, it seems to work. Madison Hildebrand is back from season 1 -- and this time he's openly "polyamorous", dating men and women. He's joined by Josh Flagg, who's grandmother is a Holocaust survivor and the first person to import polyester to the United States. Josh is a 25 and never went to college but has become one of the top agents in the area.

Then there's Chad Rogers -- I've spent the past hour trying to think of how to describe him, but I can't think of any words that are appropriate for a family site like WalletPop. So you'll have to watch the half-hour preview episode below and decide for yourself.

TV Squad reports that Million Dollar Listing will premiere on Tuesday August 5th at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo, immediately following the season finale of Flipping Out. The series will then move to its regular time, Tuesdays at 10 p.m.

As a Cape Cod, MA native, I can't help but notice how badly market woes have beaten down real estate in many parts of the area. I've seen condos that sold in the $220,000 range a few years ago listed at $99,000.

I found a unit in Falmouth that is very inexpensive and sticks out as a possible investment property. I wasn't familiar with the address and, wanting to know about the neighborhood before I look any further, I Googled it: "Parker Road" in "Falmouth."

One the first page of matches, I found:

CARREIRO, Ronald J., Jr., 17, 35 Parker Road Apt. 5, East Falmouth; driving uninsured motor vehicle June 5 in Bourne, dismissed upon payment of $100 court cost; driving unregistered motor vehicle, no inspection sticker, not responsible; license plate violation to conceal identification, dismissed.

Winifred Moniz, 73, was found dead shortly after noon Monday in her home on John Parker Road. The victim's husband was mowing the lawn at the time of the alleged attack.

The search for the perfect investment property continues. Moral of story: Google the neighborhood before you buy!

The New York Times reports that, as more people face foreclosure and affordable housing continues to be a problem for the working poor, more of an effort is being to help those groups help each other out. Community organizations are offering services to help boarders find struggling homeowners in need of a few hundred extra dollars per month to make mortgage payments.

Of course it's not ideal for homeowners -- few people get excited at the prospect of sharing their homes with a stranger -- but this is exactly the right kind of solution to the foreclosure crisis. No handouts and no bailouts: just people who have needs working together to reach an agreement that benefits both parties.

The opportunities for this are quite good. With foreclosures soaring nationwide, people are getting kicked out of their homes, and those homes are sitting empty. Banks don't rent out their foreclosures and this is causing, paradoxically, a lack of affordable housing in the face of plummeting property values.

And, experts say, living with someone else, especially in times of financial stress, can be tremendously rewarding. So if you have an extra bedroom and you're short on cash, give some thought to taking on a boarder.

When I was a freshman at the University of Massachusetts -- Amherst last year, I took the plunge: I pulled some money out of savings to make the 20% down payment on a condo near my school, planning to live in it (After I bought it I decided that I could make more money renting it out and living in the dorm, but that's another story that involves night of stepping over other people's barf to get to the shower while the tenant relaxed in my hot tub.).

Admittedly, most students don't have the resources to invest in real estate but maybe their parents do. If you're a parent in that fortunate situation, buying your student a condo to live in is something you should give serious consideration to.

Realty Times recently reported that "Student housing in major college and university towns has been one of the steadiest performing niches in real estate throughout the current down cycle. After all, no matter what's going on in the economy, college students are still flooding campuses, they still need a place to live, and they strongly prefer private rental housing over dormitories."

Mortgage expert David Reed invites WalletPop readers to ask him questions about real estate financing. Leave your questions in the comment section of this post.

Fannie Mae is the nickname given to the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA). First established as a government agency in 1938 by Franklin D. Roosevelt then later re-chartered in 1968 as a publicly traded and government sponsored enterprise. Fannie's job is to provide liquidity in the mortgage market. Freddie Mac, or the Federal Home Loan Corporation (FHMLC) was created in 1970 as a government sponsored private entity just like Fannie Mae with a similar mission, to provide liquidity and add stability in the housing market using private funds.

So how do they do that? How do they provide liquidity and stability in the mortgage market? Let's first look at liquidity and why that's important. When a mortgage company wants to make a home loan it can do so from it's vault of cash or it can be issued from the lender's credit line it has established for the sole purpose of making home loans. Let's say a lender has $100 million in available funds to place mortgages. Now let's say that same lender was successful in its endeavor and lent out everything it had. Zero bank balance. Okay, they've got a lot of real estate in their portfolio but they've run out of cash. Remember, they call lenders "lenders" for a reason, if there's no money to lend, they won't be lenders for very much longer. So what to do?

There are no shortage of books out there for first-time home buyers, but Alison Rogers' Diary of a Real Estate Rookie: My Year of Flippin, Selling, and Rebuilding -- and What I Learned the Hard Way is easily the most interesting I've read, probably because it hasn't a how-to guide filled with platitudes like "don't buy the first house you see."

As the title would suggest, this isn't a how-to guide at all. Instead it's a former real estate writer's tale of her first year as a real estate agent/aspiring investor -- it's a quick and funny read (I finished it in one sitting), and it's a remarkably candid expose of all the problems that prospective home buyers can face in dealing with agents. The book begins "More than six million Americans move each year. If anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, more than 5.9 million of them hate their real estate agent." She describes the unethical tactics that many of her competitors use to inflate their incomes at the expense of clients. Sprinkled throughout the narrative are informative sidebars like "tricks to keep from overpaying", "the greatest rental search tip ever" (definitely worth the price of admission), and "five tips to ease the pain of selling."

In addition to being a valuable guide for rookie buyers, this is also probably the first book anyone contemplating a career as an agent should buy.

At 212 fun-to-read pages, you can't go wrong with this book if you're interested in real estate.

Even celebrities and Michael Jackson impersonators aren't immune to the rough housing market. Usher's Atlanta home was listed at $2.3 million back in September but, with limited signs of interest, he has now cut the price to just under $2 million.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that the home has five bedrooms, a hair salon, a guest house, a pool, and a professional recording studio. The listing agent told the newspaper that they are pricing the home to sell because the market in Atlanta continues to be weak, and a glut of new construction has made it difficult for older homes to compete.

His new album, Here I Stand, also doesn't appear to be the hit that Confessions was. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 but it's now down to number five in its third week. However Usher is an incredibly powerful concert draw, and should continue to do well there.

Maybe he should buy Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch.

A lot of observers -- myself included -- give real estate agents a hard time. The National Association of Realtors serves as the agitprop of the housing market, declaring a brighter future no matter what the actual environment is. Ebullient optimism cheered on by the industry led a lot of people into serious financial woes.

But it's important to remember that a home is the best investment most people will ever make, and the impact of real estate agents on the financial health of the country is, without question, an overwhelmingly positive one. Right now the industry is looking for ways to target 20-somethings, and that could be a huge contribution to the welfare of Generation Y.

The USA Today reports that, in an effort to connect with young people, real estate agents are posting homes on social networking sites and making YouTube videos.

One solution: find younger real estate agents who can connect with young buyers. According to RealtyTimes, almost one-third of real estate brokers. are over 60. Only 12% of sales agents are under 35. This might seem like a crazy time to go into the real estate business but, if you're a recent graduate struggling to find a good job, it just might be worth a shot. There would seem to be a huge market (The echo boomers) that older agents are having trouble connecting with.

One of my favorite television shows is House Hunters -- if you're planning to buy a home and looking to learn more about the process, you should absolutely watch this show. You'll learn a lot.

I recently watched an episode that featured a middle-aged couple looking to buy a second home in Las Vegas, preferably a condo. They lived in Los Angeles and were enthusiastic about buying an "investment property" and the real estate agent was equally enthusiastic about Vegas' prospects. She had a commission to earn.

But as they looked at condos, there was just one problem. The units were nice and the locations seemed ideal, but the sounds of new construction were a major turn-off. Who wants to wake up to that? But every condo they looked at suffered from that problem.

Of course the show was taped in 2005 -- the height of the Vegas real estate bubble that has been crashing lately -- so it's easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight, but it's interesting nevertheless: did any of these people looking at condos hear the construction and wonder "Will demand keep up with the rapid building? If there's a glut of condos available, won't people want the fancy new ones instead of this old one?"

But they never thought of that. No one ever suggested that all the new construction could be anything but good, amazing given that a huge increase in supply would tend to drive down prices, which is exactly what ended up happening.

Another thing: all the discussion about an "investment property" aside, I never heard any mention of rental rates, vacancy rates, cap rates, etc. I think they were planning to buy the unit as a second home, calling it an investment property. But remember the golden rule of real estate investing: if you aren't generating income, you aren't investing. You're speculating (i.e. hoping) that rising prices will bail you out of a bad investment.

When I saw the USA Today's story on the declining Florida real estate market, my first reaction was "Great: just what we need." Maybe they can also tell us about how Hillary Clinton won't be the next president.

But the article has at least one interesting quote:

"If we look at 2003, before the huge spurt in sales happened, we would see that the numbers are not far off," says Kimberly Kirschner, chairman of the Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches. "Are we in a bad market or a good market? That's relative."

Right. It's all relative. With all due respect to the many fine Realtors working in the field, the spin of their spokespeople is unprecedented. These people are giving Baghdad Bob a run for his money.

I wonder what Kirschner was telling people to be wary of a bubble a couple years ago because price appreciation is "relative" and home values had risen completely out of line with income growth. I somehow doubt it. But the spin isn't fooling anyone: it's just making Realtors look bad, which is a shame.

A developer outside San Diego is hoping the old buy-one-get-one-free deal will lure customers. If you buy a $1.6 million home in San Pasqual Valley, he'll throw in an Escondido row home, which he values at $400,000. The San Diego Union Tribune says the Michael Crews Developers insist the prices are legit, not just holdovers from the boom. They say the rowhouses originally sold for $540,000 but now are going for $400,000.

They told the paper only one person has made an offer -- and they don't want to take on an extra house. Instead they want Crews to take their old house off their hands. In this real estate market, who wants more house, even if it is at current prices? But meanwhile this offer is making the rounds in the blogs and on TV as the latest internet craziness.

Of course this all seems desperate. But that's making Crews a star for today. But is it a ham-fisted and awkward kind of promotion? No, for that you'll really need to check out the Michael Crews blog. He "blogs" in press release style that Michael Crews Offers Two Homes for the Price of One. In February, 2007, he offered homebuyers a free truck. What's the most fun is to check out the comments on his stories like this one entry from two years ago . An anonymous commentator says: "Did you know that the San Diego Business Journal recognizes Michael Crews Development as one of San Diego's Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies?" then goes on to spontaneously spout some other marketing stats. Later another obviously totally random person who has nothing to do with company exclaimed "I didn't know Michael Crews Development had won such an incredible award. I do know they have beautiful new homes for sale in San Diego County...."

It seemed like such a perfect idea: rather than buying a single-family home with a picket fence, thousands of New Englanders bought multi-families, living in one unit and renting out the other unit to help pay the mortgage.

But the Associated Press reports that, especially in Massachusetts, things have gone horribly wrong. The benefits of multi-families were overstated, and the prices were bid up by exuberant buyers armed with little equity and gimmicky mortgages.

Now prices are down, the interest rates have reset, and there are more foreclosure petitions than homes sold. Is it a good time to buy multi-families in New England? That depends. If you're buying a multi-family, you have to do the rigorous analysis that too many people fail to do. Will living in a multi-family really be cheaper than a single-family? What are the vacancy rates in your area? And a warning: do not base your calculation on low teaser rates on gimmicky mortgages. Before you even contemplate thinking about thinking about buying a multi-family, read this book.

Whether 'tis nobler in the minds of your parents and friends to rent; than to suffer the slings and arrows of home ownership, I have a few calculators that will help you make the decision based on your unique situation. Owning a home is an idea which is drilled into us from the moment we become financially aware of the cost to live someplace. Many people consider renting to be throwing away money which you could be using to build equity. In reality the true cost benefit of owning a home relies on many factors including home price, rental increase, home value appreciation and length of ownership.

A recent Forbes article blares the headline "How low will real estate go?"

The piece quotes a bunch of experts and includes a bunch of statistics but, for most home owners, I think that asking how low real estate price will go is precisely the wrong question. The right question is "Are houses in my area at a price now where it makes sense for me to buy?"

Here's what David Farrell, director of tourism of the Long Island Foreclosure Tours, told Reuters about falling home prices. It's worth writing down:

"To me, that's intrinsic value in real estate -- when you can live in a house and every month your bills are lower than they'd be as a rental. It's hard to lose if you're a long-term purchaser and it costs less every month to buy than to rent."

Assessing whether home ownership makes financial sense is a much easier question to answer than how much lower the market will go. It's also a much more important question.

I've read a lot of stuff about the investment philosophies of the great bargain hunters -- people like Warren Buffett, John Templeton and Carl Icahn -- and I can say for an absolute fact that I've never found any great investor who listed being able to get in at the bottom of the market as a key to his success. Rather, buying at a price that made sense as a long-term investment and having the intestinal fortitude to ride out dips led these investors to great wealth. It can do the same thing for you.