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

PHILADELPHIA — Over the last two months, Darlene E. Jamison, team leader of the RE/MAX-affiliated Jamison Team, has been sending more texts and making more calls. She and her husband, Kevin, are "planting the seeds" by asking past clients to keep them in mind for future moves and trying to find new clients as the housing market shifts.

"It ...Read more

Inflation has been sky-high over the last year, so it’s a good thing that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is boosting its cost of living adjustment (COLA) for benefit checks in 2023. It’s just one of many changes announced by Social Security recently.

Here are some key changes to Social Security happening next year – and what you...Read more

Credit card debt grew moderately in September, as gas prices continued to decline. While inflation remained an issue impacting consumers, rising 8.2 percent over the year for September, gas prices were down 4.9 percent from August. This follows August’s month-over-month 10.6 percent downslide in gas prices.

Consumer revolving debt — which ...Read more

Recessions are more than just a slowing economy, volatile stock market and a bad spell of data. Behind the numbers and jargon are real people — and real livelihoods at stake.

Think about the economy as an ecosystem. Each decision made by a business, financial institution or person has ripple effects throughout the entire financial system. ...Read more

U.S. consumers are seeing home buying conditions at their worst in a generation as mortgage rates soar in response to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive tightening cycle.

About four in five consumers now describe buying conditions for homes as bad, a record in data going back to 1978, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer ...Read more