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The Attorney General’s Office is asking a federal judge to overturn a bankruptcy court ruling that some legal experts say could harm New Hampshire homeowners who fall into debt, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported. New Hampshire state law establishes a “homestead right,” stating: “Every person is entitled to $120,000 worth of his or her homestead, or of his or her interest therein, as a homestead.” Bankruptcy attorneys say that protection typically has been doubled for married couples, to $240,000. However, in June, the chief judge in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Bruce Harwood, ruled that the husband of a Merrimack woman seeking bankruptcy protection was not entitled to a homestead exemption because he is not on the deed to the family’s home. The bankruptcy trustee had objected to the homeowner’s claim of a second homestead exemption for her husband, and Harwood agreed. “Because the Debtor’s spouse is not an owner of the property, he is not entitled to claim an exemption,” he wrote in his opinion. “The couple is not allowed to ‘double-dip’ and claim $240,000 as exempt,” he wrote. Nashua attorney Leonard Deming, who represents the homeowner, has appealed that decision to the U.S. District Court in Concord.

The Justice Department on Wednesday announced a $13 million settlement with a New Jersey bank that failed to provide loans and other services in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities in the Newark area, the Washington Post reported. As part of the agreement, Lakeland Bank has agreed to create a $12 million loan subsidy fund that will help provide access to credit for borrowers, federal authorities said. The bank will also invest $1 million in outreach, advertising and education and open two new branches in the affected counties. The bank engaged in redlining practices from 2015 to 2021, with none of its 40 branches located in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, said Philip Sellinger, U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. Other banks generated about five times more mortgages in those neighborhoods than did Lakeland, he said, adding that his office estimated that $120 million in loans would have been distributed by the bank if it had actively sought out borrowers. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the civil rights division, said that the federal case against Lakeland was the fourth major settlement in the past year in a broader Justice Department push to combat redlining across the country. The other settlement agreements, in Houston, Memphis and Philadelphia, netted $25 million in loan subsidy funds.

Home prices in August were down about 6% from their peak in June, the biggest 2-month drop in prices in nearly a decade. The pace of home sales slowed for the 7th straight month, NPR.org. "The housing market certainly reacts to the monetary policy change," says Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors which just released the new existing home sales numbers. The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates to fight inflation. Mortgage rates anticipate future moves by the fed and bond markets more broadly, so they rose very sharply earlier this year — from around 3% to up above 6%. Just about all economists agree that this is not a housing crash and that this situation is different than in 2008, when the bottom fell out of the housing market. Right now, the nation is in the midst of a severe housing shortage. For a decade following the 2008 crash, builders didn't build enough homes. Today homes are still getting snapped up by buyers and put under-agreement in near-record time — just 16 days on average.

Rents and other shelter costs are emerging as a major driver of overall consumer inflation, keeping it high at a time when many other sources are starting to ease, the Wall Street Journal reported. Economists expect housing inflation to strengthen further before cooling off in the coming months, but are unsure of when relief will appear. This creates another challenge for the Federal Reserve as it raises interest rates to reduce price pressures. Overall annual inflation eased to 8.3% in August from 8.5% in July, according to the Labor Department’s consumer-price index. That reflected declines from the month before in prices for items such as gasoline, airfares and used cars, and slower price increases in other categories, such as groceries. Housing was an outlier. Not only are shelter costs rising, they are climbing at an accelerating pace, accounting for a growing share of the overall inflation rate — about 25% of August’s rate, up from about 20% in February. Shelter costs — comprising mostly rents and a gauge of home prices known as owners’ equivalent rent — rose 0.7% in August from the previous month, up from 0.5% in July. They rose 6.2% in August from a year before, up from 5.7% in July.

The cost of renting a home in the U.S. is surging and young workers have felt the sharpest pain, many of them taking on additional jobs or roommates to afford housing costs, Reuters reported. Household rents in 2021 jumped 10% from pre-pandemic levels, according to Census Bureau estimates released last week. The figures came as rising healthcare and rental costs pushed U.S. consumer prices up unexpectedly last month. The data from the bureau’s annual American Community Survey put median U.S. rent at $1,037 in 2021, up from $941 in 2019. Year-over-year increases in the median household rent over the past decade were typically 2% or 3% — one exception was the 5% rise from 2018 to 2019. Adding to renters' woes, rents in the professionally-managed sector — usually larger properties operated by management companies — have risen even more dramatically. Annual rent growth there hit 11.6% at the end of 2021 and start of 2022, about three times what it was in the five years prior to the pandemic, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. At the same time, vacancy rates fell to their lowest since 1984 as post-pandemic demand surged.