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The Obama administration plans to tap the rich to help pay for its ambitious programs. Specifically, that will include slashing mortgage interest deductions for high-income taxpayers.

You'd think that a home buyer who put down a deposit of $1 million would be pretty much locked into a purchase, even in the toughest circumstances. But, as The New York Times reports today, buyers in Manhattan's expensive condo market are having second thoughts about properties they agreed to buy before the financial crisis. Buyers are leaving deposits of hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million on the table, the article says.

Even more surprising, some of the buyers who abandoned their massive deposits are back in the market, looking for better deals elsewhere.

Do you dread going into the cellar during a hard rain? You just know you're going to see puddles on the floor or get a sneezing fit from the musty air. A wet basement - a problem that plagues about 60% of homeowners, according to the American Society of Home Inspectors - is not a situation to ignore.

Existing, single-family home sales increased 100.8 percent in January to a seasonally adjusted rate of 624,940, according to the California Association of Realtors. The statewide median price of an existing single-family home decreased 40.5 percent in January to $254,350

C.A.R.’s Unsold Inventory Index was 6.7 months in January, compared with 16.6 months in January 2008

· The median number of days it took to sell a single-family home was 49.9 days in January 2009, compared with 70.8 days in January 2008

BusinessWeek's Mara Der Hovanesian reports today on what passes for good news in the housing market. She's attending JPMorgan Chase's annual investor conference in New York.

Charlie Scharf, head of retail financial services at JPM, said today that the discounts for their real-estate-owned sales in California fell in 2008. That means the percentage they have to mark down a foreclosed house to sell got smaller. The number of days that foreclosed houses stay on the market before being sold shrank as well, Scharf says. Loss-severity numbers rose but appeared to stabilize in the second half. January 2009 was worse than December 2008, but not by a lot.

Scharf's hopeful bottom line: "There seems to be some bottoming in California. It's one place where we see a meaningful [stabilization of] ... house price deterioration."

Discounts for JPM Chase's owned or confiscated homes in California fell from 17.7% in January 2008 to 3.8% in December 2008, before ticking up to 5.6% in January 2009. Average days on market fell from 153 to 104 in December 2008, then crept back to 120 in January 2009. The percent of loss severity rose from 16.5% to 42.%, but that number has hovered from 36% in August to 41.6% in January 2009.

It's way too soon to call a bottom in the housing market in California, much less the nation as a whole. Not with the Commerce Dept. reporting today that sales of new homes nationwide dropped 10% in January to an annual pace of 309,000, the lowest level since data began in 1963. On the other hand, as Hot Property blogger Prashant Gopal observed recently, housing starts are extremely depressed. Whenever housing turns around, you can expect a "massive" jump in starts.

Sales of existing homes fell in January to their lowest levels in nearly 12 years, with a real estate group saying buyers delayed purchases in anticipation of government programs to boost the housing market.

Web tracking firm comScore, Inc. released an analysis of changes in Americans’ searching behavior resulting from the economic downturn, based on December 2008 data.

Searches for several terms related to the economic downturn showed dramatic gains during the past year. Among the most notable increases were searches relating to the deteriorating job market, including searches using the term “unemployment” (8.2 million searches) and “unemployment benefits” (748,000 searches).

Meanwhile, terms relating to housing, including “mortgage” (up 72 percent to 7.8 million searches), “bankruptcy” (up 156 percent to 2.6 million searches), and “foreclosure” (up 67 percent to 1.4 million searches) also grew strongly. And Americans, resilient as they are, are seeking ways to save money, as evidenced by the increase in the number of searches for “coupons” (up 161 percent to 19.9 million) and “discount” (up 26 percent to 7.9 million).
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Search Term Total Searches (000)
Dec-2007 Dec-2008 % Change
“Coupons” 7,637 19,921 161%
“Unemployment” 2,688 8,214 206%
“Discount” 6,271 7,928 26%
“Mortgage” 4,518 7,756 72%
“Bankruptcy” 1,012 2,589 156%
“Foreclosure” 824 1,373 67%
“Unemployment Benefits” 215 748 247%

Source: comScore Marketer

Burnham USA Equities Inc. and affiliate Burnham-Ward Properties have purchased  out of receivership South Coast Home Furnishings Centre in Costa Mesa, Calif., for approximately $35 million.

Kenco Logistic Services, a Tennessee-based, privately held third party logistics provider, signed a five-year 517,000-square-foot industrial lease in Redlands, Calif.

You know the economy is front and center in the national psyche when TMZ.com, the celebrity gossip site best known for breaking the news of Mel Gibson's drunk driving arrest is now writing about the bank bailout.

In this latest expose, big bank Northern Trust, a recipient of federal bailout funds is shown parting it up in Los Angeles, with not just a golf open but private parties at a Sunset Strip night club, Tiffany gift bags, petite Angus filets and concerts by Sheryl Crow and Chicago.