The Federal Housing Administration yesterday said that after less than two months it is relaxing terms of a program designed to help troubled mortgage borrowers because so far the effort has not been effective.

New-home construction tumbled to a record low last month, according to government data released yesterday, further proof that the housing sector’s woes keep deepening.

In the casino of the housing market, Tom Walters is holding the wrong cards. He’s a mortgage broker, so business has been slow, and on his own house, payments have risen to about $6,200 — too much to handle.

The long arm of the global financial crisis reached down into Morena Parada’s preschool classroom, where a little girl named Joeli Arias-Lopez painted bright green and orange splotches on an oversize easel and pronounced it a house.

The end of the housing bubble may also signal the end of the McMansion, that much-maligned symbol of suburban American excess.

What will it take to get people off the sidelines to buy houses and help stimulate the economy?

“There’s nothing here,” said J. Randolph Embrey, 77, who has lived in Rectortown his whole life. “That’s why I like it.”

With a crush of visitors expected this Inauguration Day, hundreds of area residents are advertising their homes as temporary — and top-dollar — rentals over the four days leading up to Jan. 20. It’s a brilliant solution to the lodging shortage, but let’s pause a moment to examine the potential …

More than a year into the foreclosure crisis, whether a distressed homeowner is eligible for a more affordable mortgage can often come down to the fine print.

The government and mortgage industry — including federally run mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — today announced a new streamlined system for modifying the mortgages of hundreds of thousands of borrowers to avoid foreclosure, according to two people familiar with the matter.