Landlord Sonja Kluesener first suspected something fishy when three potential renters contacted her about the Zebulon home she’d just listed on Zillow, and there was a significant price difference.

In her ad, she’d listed the three-bedroom ranch-style cottage at $1,700 per month. But they reported finding a similar ad on another listings ...Read more

Mortgage rates have dropped for the third week in a row, sending some relief to potential homebuyers.

The average 30-year fixed rate for a mortgage reached 6.49%, following a few weeks of decreases from the record highs of over 7% seen last month, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

“Mortgage rates declined again last week, ...Read more

Winter heating bills will be higher this year for most homeowners, regardless of how you heat your home.

Residential customers will spend about 28% more to heat with natural gas than last winter, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, though gas prices appear to have stabilized somewhat since dramatic increases at the end of last winter.

...Read more

A fitness tracker, gym membership, ergonomic chair, an air conditioner — if you didn't know your FSA or HSA may cover these items, you may not be getting the biggest bang for your buck out of these popular health care savings accounts.

Flexible Spending Accounts and Health Savings Accounts both allow people to squirrel away pretax money to ...Read more

It seems like such good news — Social Security benefits are going up 8.7% next year, thanks to inflation. But for a lot of people, their tax bill could go up, too.

That’s because tax rates on Social Security benefits are not changing with inflation.

Taxing Social Security benefits began in 1984 as part of a sweeping reform of the system. ...Read more

In Southern California, a mansion is a micro-economy.

Every luxury property has a developer who envisioned it, an architect who built it, an agent who sold it, and a deep-pocketed buyer who had to have it.

To run the place — to have the guests greeted, drinks poured, floors polished, windows washed, cupboards stocked, the perimeter secured, ...Read more

Stepping over needles on the sidewalk, Alexander Cruz walked up to the crumbling front stoop of a West Baltimore home. He craned his neck and looked through an open third-story window to see whether the roof had caved in yet.

Cruz’s company had a deal to buy this vacant rowhouse, one of at least 15,000 in Baltimore. He wanted to renovate it, ...Read more

Robert Gardner said he knew it was time to move after he came home to find his Valley Village apartment broken into and ransacked.

He originally moved there for safety, a change the South L.A. native comfortably afforded on minimum wage because a coveted Section 8 voucher covered most of the rent.

But recently, Gardner noticed more drug ...Read more

With construction costs for new homes and interest rates soaring, vacant housing is drawing more attention as a shortcut to quickly getting more units on the market.

But whether vacant homes are a curse or an opportunity depends on where you live.

As housing affordability plummets and rents rise, putting more families with low incomes at risk ...Read more

States, cities and community groups that offer free money to families to jump-start college savings face a dilemma: The families most in need often fail to sign up.

To solve the problem, some states have transformed the accounts into automatic programs that help all families — especially the disadvantaged — imagine a college future for ...Read more

Warren Buffett is arguably the world’s most famous investor, and his investment moves are closely followed. Each quarter, the company he runs, Berkshire Hathaway, discloses its current holdings to shareholders.

Here are some of the changes Buffett and his two investment officers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, made during the third quarter, ...Read more