Bloomberg:  Karl Case, co-founder of a home-price index that bears his name, said more auctions of foreclosed properties are helping remove inventory from the housing market and may lead to a faster recovery.

Wall Street Journal: Home sales are rising in some U.S. metropolitan areas where lenders have slashed prices on foreclosed properties…Home sales are rising in some U.S. metropolitan areas where lenders have slashed prices on foreclosed properties.

Wall Street Journal:  Some school districts, hoping to control costs and prevent overcrowding, are intensifying efforts to make sure students actually live where they are registered.

Districts from Florida to California are hiring private investigators, creating anonymous tip lines and imposing penalties when they believe people have registered at false addresses. The measures often are spurred by parents who feel they pay a premium in property taxes to get their children into good schools.

The Consumerist:  Maybe there are no more debtors’ prisons, but that doesn’t mean your life can’t be screwed up by unscrupulous collection agencies.

Los Angeles Times:  Capitol Weekly, citing tax records at the Sacramento County assessor’s office, reports “... in January 2007, Richardson took out a mortgage for the entire sale price of the house — $535,000. The mortgage amount was equal to the sale price of the home, meaning she was able to buy the house without a down payment, even though the housing market was beginning to turn. A March 19, 2008 notice of trustee’s sale indicates that the unpaid balance of Richardson’s loan, which is held by Washington Mutual, is more than $578,000 –- $40,000 more than the original mortgage.”

Long Beach Press-Telegram:  Congresswoman Defaults On Loan…

Seattle Times:  There was a time in America when losing your home to the mortgage lender was about the worst financial calamity that could befall a person. Not only were you homeless, your dignity was trampled by the repossession of your property.

Reuters:  They enter through a broken first-floor window each night to sleep on a moldy bed in the abandoned four-family house at 827 Main Street, part of a new generation of squatters emboldened by America’s housing foreclosure crisis.

The Tennessean:  housing counselors are bracing for a wave of thousands of resetting mortgages over the next year, and they worry that neighborhoods with too many risky loans could see more foreclosures as cash-strapped borrowers fall further behind on their monthly house payments…

Houston Chronicle:  A growing share of home sales in the Houston area are foreclosures – And that’s putting downward pressure on the sales prices of existing homes…

The failure to take action to prevent the descent into disrepair, economic distress and crime of revitalized urban neighborhoods across the nation…