Move over, mortgage payment. You're being nudged out of the headlines.

A new report from the Center for Housing Policy reports that almost every major expense associated with home ownership has shot up in the last ten years. (the study looks at the years between 1996 and 2006). The report, "Stretched Thin: The Impact of Rising Housing Expenses on America's Owners and Renters" lays out some sobering realities. But at least you know it's not just your imagination. (make sure to read the comments of this MarketWatch piece. Very interesting).

Not only has the average mortgage payment increased by 46% in those ten years, but property taxes increased 66%. Utilities shot up 43%. Property insurance spiked 83%!

Homeowner Incomes? Those went up by about 36% in those ten years, according to the survey (wonder if they collected that information from mortgage applications. "Liar Loans" were rife in the latter part of that decade).

Renters aren't excluded from this pain, either, as landlords tend to pass their increased costs onto their tenants. According to the report, rents rose by about 51% over the period examined, while renter incomes only rose 31%.

Apart from adding more gloomy news for your weekend, the report does make some recommendations. New housing needs to be far more energy efficient, and built closer to urban centers and public transportation.

For more details, see the entire report here.

Despite my Ivy League MBA and my role as a founder of a personal finance web site, I haven't done much in the way of planning my financial situation. All of my financial milestones in the past decade or so have been accidental, serendipitous, or just a gut response to a disaster.

I was pregnant pretty much the moment after I was engaged, at 28. Through the birth of three boys (all of which came along a little sooner than I expected), I worked in a unusual career that I made up out of whole cloth, starting out in dotcom operations management, finance and product development and ending as a professional blog producer. While it paid fairly well, it did not pay nearly as well as the jobs of my business school peers; and it became very difficult to make extra room in my budget to pay my huge student loan payments. Instead of paying down my student loans, I've only compounded them.

One thing I did brilliantly was to buy a house in an up-and-coming neighborhood immediately upon getting pregnant with my first child, and never refinancing it. Buying it was a gut reaction to the nesting hormones, but it turned out wonderfully. Four years later a Starbucks went in two blocks away, and my home's value doubled. Early on, I took out a home equity loan to (hiding my head in shame) pay for our wedding; I'm thankful I never refinanced the house, keeping my ARM that was garnered at the peak of my credit score. While I was seriously guilty of living outside of my means as a young bride and mama, after I became pregnant with my second son I buttoned down the hatches, canceling all my credit cards and vowing to live on what I made.

That one really good decision -- never to refinance my mortgage -- has paid off with a low-ish monthly payment and a fast-reducing principal balance. And with my new philosophy of "no debt no way never," I know at least I won't be facing a tough credit review at my local bank.

While the real estate market goes soft in many areas and more and more Americans become two mortgage families it's no surprise that some sellers are looking for gimmicks to get their home off the market. The New York Times reports that some homeowners are shifting their attention from one buyer to thousands as they raffle off their homes. One couple who recently raffled off their home $100 at a time sold over 6,500 tickets and raised $200,000 more than their home was worth, which was donated to a local charity.

In case you're wondering what motivated the couple above to give away $200,000 after trying to sell their house for so long, a look at the restrictions on gambling in your state should clear this up. In most states you cannot raffle off real estate or land without a nonprofit partner and in New York you can't raffle a house at all so keep that in mind before you run out and stock up on raffle tickets.

Some people are more optimistic than others. Ty Warner, the publicity shy mogul behind the Beanie Baby empire, has signed on for a penthouse apartment in Chicago...that hasn't even been built yet.

Warner has signed a contract to buy the 10,000, two-story penthouse in a proposed luxury building known at the Chicago Spire. The original asking price for the suite was $40 million, but Warner probably got a better deal, considering the real estate situation at the moment. Construction of the building has been halted due to the emaciated real estate market and attendant economic woes, but none of that seems to bother Warner.

I suppose when you've built a multi-million dollar empire on little stuffed toys, you've got reason to believe the glass is half full. Also, Warner, who is on Forbes 400 richest Americans list, with a net-worth of some $4.4 billion, holds a lot of real estate, which has tied him over well as the Beanie Baby craze has ebbed. According to Forbes, he owns the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City and the Montecito Country Club in Santa Barbara, California, among other extremely hi-hat properties. No word on what he actually did pay for his new apartment. But then this is a guy who doesn't need no stinking mortgage.

Warner locked in the penthouse suite on floors 141 and 142, which promises 360-degree views of the city when completed. But these vaunted views are a long way aways. Although the building will be the tallest residential building in the world, So far, the developer of the project, Shelbourne Development, only has the foundation completed.

Still, a man can dream. And if anyone has the wherewithal to do so these days, it's Ty Warner.

Don't you hate the first time you make a certain kind of purchase? We've all been in the situation when even the tidbits of advice you have heard over the years don't fully prepare you for the transaction.

The first time I felt this way about a deal was when I bought my first car. I made some goofy decisions and even though I did it half right I still felt like I could have gotten a better deal if I had been through the process before. As my wife and I are exploring home ownership I can't help but think that I am going to feel the same way about our home purchase.

Yesterday I found a great resource which really raised my hopes for taking out a mortgage and buying a home without remorse. The aptly titled article, "How to Get a Mortgage" on Mahalo.com breaks down the process of getting a mortgage into bite size morsels of knowledge so detailed and applicable it should be printed in pamphlets and handed out in front of every bank!

Our friends at Forbes have put out their annual list of the "Best cities for singles." San Francisco was the top city last year, but Atlanta crowded it out because of lower cost of living and job growth.

While job growth and living above the poverty level are certainly nice when you are a young single-something, in reality you are mainly looking for other singles to make yourself less single (or something.)

The rest of the top five include a bizarre tie between Dallas and Minnesota (maybe depending on your political affiliation you prefer one to the other.) and our nation's capitol, Washington, D.C.

I always find it interesting to see which occupations and markets survive and prosper when the economy gets tough. My interest is likely linked to my fascination with the way certain creatures adapt to weather changes in climates and environments. Along those lines, I was fascinated when MSNBC ran an interesting story about "board up" men, a group of contractors who specialize in taking care of foreclosed properties.

Many of the individuals making the transition from high-end kitchen and bath installers to board up men are still making good money, pulling in between $1,500 and $5,000 per job and working 5-10 jobs a week. Banks who don't keep their properties in good condition face fines from local communities as part of an effort to shore up neighboring home prices and keep out squatters. The costs associated with keeping a foreclosure from becoming a public nuisance are high enough that it might be money better spent on providing potential buyers with more detailed information on the quality of a foreclosed property in order to move the home quicker.

I'm surprised at how quickly this need was filled by resourceful contractors. Then again, I guess the construction business has been a little slow lately. With an estimated 35% of real estate listings made up of foreclosures and bank-owned homes, I'm about ready to quit my day job and pick up a new career involving wood, screws and plywood. Well, that or I could use my last week of vacation boarding up a few local properties!

Neal Templin's Cheapskate column in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required), is a reminder that restlessness -- and the cost of relocation -- doesn't come cheap.

Templin and his wife are making their fifth move in 17 years. In their situation, it's work related. Still, even with the fringes of a corporate relocation, the costs add up. "You spend thousands fixing up the home you sell and thousands more fixing up the home you buy," and that doesn't include the costs -- both in time and money -- that most of us don't consider. Things like transferring automobile registration and insurance, finding new resources, or enrolling in new schools may demand more time and stress than money, but it all counts.

In "The Millionaire Next Door," 1998, Stanley and Danko described research they had done into the characteristics of millionaires. It turned out that millionaires often don't look like millionaires. They don't necessarily drive a Mercedes or even a relatively new car. More interesting, millionaires tend to stay put. They stay married and they don't move all that often. They tend to keep what they acquire. They also don't spend much time on home projects. They don't fritter their energy away, the use it to make more money.

We may be beginning to emerge from decades of bigger is better and more still isn't enough. Maybe we'll become less restless.

When it comes to borrowing money, credit unions are my favorite place to go because of the quality personal service I receive. In the current credit industry, where the 10th bank this year recently closed, credit unions are faring well and even bragging about it.

BankRate.com looked into how credit unions are prospering while conventional banks are taking hits across the board. It found that the success was linked to credit unions being quicker to share best practices even with those in the same market, and due to the fact that the credit unions faced lower write-offs and delinquencies than traditional banks.

Not only are credit unions doing well in avoiding write-offs, but many of them are boasting increased membership. Further adding to the health of credit unions in a tumultuous environment is that for the first quarter of 2008, as a whole, they issued more loans than they have historically. Analysts place this rise on the willingness of credit unions to utilize their local knowledge and sit down with individuals in order to provide smart lending.

This throwback to the old-fashioned, highly human-involved method of banking may be one part of what protected the credit unions from the current fallout, not to mention a good way for individuals to continue to get loans to get the economy back on track, at least on a small scale.

Ed McMahon has finally found a buyer for his multi-million dollar house avoiding foreclosure. Reportedly, his mortage lenders filed notice of default in Februrary when McMahon was over $644,00 in arrears. When McMahon was interviewed regarding his money woes, he blamed his financial problems on having broken his neck about 18 months ago, preventing him from working.

I certainly can empathize with health issues causing financial hardship, but where's the bucks? McMahon worked for over 30 years on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, was the host of Star Search and spokesperson for dozens of products. I repeat: "Where's the bucks?"

While several accounts connect McMahon's problems to the credit squeeze and U.S. housing downturn, I think it has a lot more to do with poor money management. At 85 years old, with a career that spanned decades, you would think that McMahon would be financial secure. But I have seen this before.

You might blame the fact that houses in Detroit's drug war-torn neighborhoods are going for $1 (plus closing costs and thousands in back taxes) on the foreclosure crisis, but the reality is grimmer and probably more permanent.

Although the Detroit News featured the $1 sales on its front page, these kinds of giveaways have been common in East Coast cities for the last 30 or 40 years as a way to unload property with no market value in their current condition.

I took one of them 30 years ago from the city of Wilmington, Del., in return for agreeing to fix it up and live in it for three years. My oldest son's first word was "Ralph," the name of the plumbing and heating contractor who spent more time than his father at our perpetually under-construction home.

But at the end of those three years worth of dust and sweat, we sold the place and cleared $25,000.

I doubt that a property giveaway in Detroit would have such a happy ending these days.

My neighbors are usually pretty insular, limiting their contact to polite waves, but the housing crisis is having a positive social affect. Thanks to the economic angst, after 10 years on the block, I now know people's names.

This morning a group of neighbors were huddled at the corner, gossiping over the sale of a house on the next street for $150,000, a price not seen in this neighborhood for at least 20 years.

The son of the owner who died last winter sold it -- probably sight unseen -- to an investor who, at least in the good old days, would have slapped on a little paint, mulched the flower beds and made a fortune.

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.

According to his website, Tom Hopkins is one of the top sales gurus in the world: "His first book, How to Master the Art of Selling, has sold over 1.6 million copies and been translated into ten languages." He is known as "the builder of sales champions."

So it's fair to say that the techniques he suggests are probably employed by a good number of successful real estate agents. Here's a sample of his "advice" for real estate agents looking to increase sales, from his book Mastering the Art of Selling Real Estate:

"If there is a charge to refinance the property prior to the maturity date, don't call it the prepayment penalty. Who wants to be penalized? No one. Call it the prepayment privilege."

I understand the it's the real estate agent's job to put his best foot forward but, to me, that language is incredibly misleading. The truth is that everyone who buys a house has the privilege of prepaying; a prepayment penalty just adds a special cost for doing so. This tricky euphemism has no basis in reality.

You may hear on the evening news or in your local paper that "home values were down 5% last month" or "foreclosures doubled," but what does all that really mean to you? For the most part, not a whole lot.

Our friends at Bankrate.com just put out this article that does a good job looking at three of the major home valuation reports or "indexes" that are often cited in the media.

Now, you may be thinking, this is too much work for me to look at all these reports and try to figure out what my home is worth. For that very reason, web sites like Zillow.com and Cyberhomes have popped up in the past few years, to offer you a real-time look at what your home may or may not be worth. Real Estate ABC also has a home valuation tool. AOL's real estate channel has a home values page, powered by Cyberhomes, for free. But the value for your home can vary widely from site to site, so if you really want to get dirty, here's an overview of the three major indices.