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U.S. unemployment is hovering near the lowest level in a decade, jobless claims have reached a 43-year low and home prices have surged to records. But in this eighth year of economic expansion, the number of single-family homes under construction remains at recessionary levels, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Housing starts dropped 18.7 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.090 million, the Commerce Department said Friday. Permits, an indication of how much construction is in the pipeline, were down a milder 4.7 percent to 1.201 million. Monthly housing figures are choppy, but the broader trend has been one of slow growth. New single-family home construction has more than doubled to a rate of 828,000 homes in November after bottoming at 353,000 in early 2009, but overall activity remains muted.

Jonathan Gray of Blackstone Group LP went on the biggest homebuying spree in history after the U.S. foreclosure crisis, purchasing repossessed properties from the courthouse steps and through online auctions, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Four years, $10 billion and roughly 50,000 homes later, he will find out if his gambit will pay off. Invitation Homes LP, the Dallas-based company Blackstone formed to maintain and rent those homes, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering that could come as soon as January. Though Blackstone is unlikely to sell much or even any of its stake in an IPO, the stock market debut will test investors’ interest in the idea that the rental-home business can be institutionalized as apartments, shopping centers and office towers were before.

Steven Mnuchin, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, electrified Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders on Wednesday when he signaled that the mortgage finance giants would finally be allowed to get out from under the federal government’s thumb, according to a New York Times commentary on Saturday. “We [have] got to get Fannie and Freddie out of government ownership,” he told Fox Business. “It makes no sense that these are owned by the government and have been controlled by the government for as long as they have.” It has been more than eight years since the federal government took over Fannie and Freddie in the mortgage crisis; as such, they are the last big piece of unfinished business from that era. When the government changed the terms of their bailouts in the summer of 2012 and began expropriating all of Fannie’s and Freddie’s profits every quarter, it seemed as if that unsatisfactory setup would go on forever. After all, it is hard for the government to give up a honey pot that has returned over $60 billion more to the Treasury than the companies received from taxpayers during their troubles.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the nation’s top consumer watchdog, is stepping up an investigation into seller-financed home sales that target lower-income home buyers unable to get a traditional mortgage, the New York Times reported today. The regulatory agency disclosed yesterday that it recently ordered two major companies that offer high-interest installment contracts, called contracts for deed, to comply with a civil investigative demand for documents. The two firms, which challenged the demand for documents, are Harbour Portfolio Advisors of Dallas and National Asset Advisors of Columbia, S.C. The agency began informally looking at seller-financed homes, and specifically contracts for deed, this year. Enforcement lawyers at the agency have been investigating the prevalence of these types of transactions to determine whether they violate federal truth-in-lending laws. Harbour Portfolio bought more than 6,700 single-family homes after the financial crisis of 2008, most of them from Fannie Mae, a government-controlled mortgage finance firm, through bulk sales. Harbour paid $10,000 or less for most of the homes, which were foreclosed on during the financial crisis, and sells them “as is.” This year, Harbour began to sell off more than 600 homes with existing contracts for deeds in place to other investment firms and individual investors.