Housing starts in the U.S. surged 15 percent in September to the highest level in four years, adding to signs of a revival in the industry at the heart of the financial crisis. more

If you have a pressing need to raise some cash, here’s some good news: Rising home values are encouraging lenders to revive a product that imploded during the housing bust years – second mortgages. more

There are streets in Newport today that a colonist who witnessed the first public reading of Rhode Island’s Royal Charter of 1663 might recognize. more

BOSTON – A total of $4 million in HomeCorps grants were awarded to 18 organizations across Massachusetts to help address the foreclosure crisis, Attorney General Martha Coakley announced last week. According to a news release, the grant funding will assist homeowners and renters impacted by the foreclosure crisis, revitalize distressed and blighted neighborhoods, and guard against future financial harm. more

No one wants to take the blame for the housing bust in this political season, but scammers and rip-off artists in the hundreds are working overtime to siphon dollars out of the wreckage of the crash and its still-vulnerable victims. more

Diego Luis Perez, co-owner of Flan Y Ajo restaurant on Westminster Street in Providence, wanted to open a wine bar. more

Single-family home prices in the Providence-Fall River-New Bedford metro area dropped 0.3 percent in October compared with the same period in 2011, according to CoreLogic’s Home Price Index. more

Patrick Boris, a banquet chef in Las Vegas, is inching closer to his own “fiscal cliff,” 2,100 miles away from the political brinksmanship under way on Capitol Hill. If Congress and the White House allow the country to go over the cliff later this month, Boris figures he could owe federal income taxes on more than $100,000 in forgiven mortgage debt following the short sale of his two-bedroom townhome next year – a personal financial “disaster,” in his words. more

The Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy often points to Bryant Park in New York City as the model for a public-private partnership transforming a crime-ridden and desolate urban space into a vital civic center. more

Urban chicken-keeping in Rhode Island appeared to cross from the fringe into the mainstream two years ago when Providence legalized small, backyard flocks, followed by Warren and exclusive Barrington last year. more