Business: Real Estate

Highest congressional career totals for contributions from PACs tied to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain sparked a furious exchange of campaign attacks Thursday night with the release of a television ad linking Democratic nominee Barack Obama to a former Fannie Mae chief who was forced out by an accounting scandal.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Freddie Mac said on Thursday it has yet to receive payments of more than $1.2 billion due from Lehman Brothers Holdings , which went bankrupt after the U.S. government refused to bail out the investment bank.

LOS ANGELES - Home sales in California surged 13.6 percent in August as a flood of foreclosures drove down prices.

Congress says it likely will adjourn this month having done nothing on the most important issue in America right now: the financial meltdown from the subprime lending crisis.

ESPANOLA, New Mexico (Reuters) - Presidential candidate Barack Obama urged the Federal Reserve and the Treasury on Thursday to take emergency steps to keep credit flowing to the troubled housing market, saying it would help stem the crisis sweeping financial markets.

LONDON - British bank Lloyds TSB PLC is buying struggling HBOS PLC, the country's biggest mortgage lender, in a $22 billion deal blessed by the government for a prominent casualty of the global credit crisis.

LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds TSB rescued Britain's biggest mortgage lender HBOS Plc on Thursday in a $22 billion takeover as the government swept aside competition rules to ease the deal through.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Reports that the US government is preparing the creation of a new entity to rescue troubled financial firms lifted Wall Street Thursday and raised hopes for an end to the credit crisis.

LONDON (Reuters) - British bank Lloyds TSB has agreed to buy rival HBOS Plc to create a 28 billion pound ($50 billion) mortgage company, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, making it the latest troubled bank to be forced into the arms of a better-funded rival.

LONDON (AFP) - HBOS, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, has reached a deal to merge with its rival Lloyds TSB, media reports said Wednesday, after the lender's shares plummeted for a third day running.

NEW YORK - Homeowners rushed to take advantage of last week's drop in interest rates following the government's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but rates are rising again on investor fears about the eroding conditions in financial markets.

LONDON (AFP) - Lloyds TSB has reached a deal to merge with HBOS, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, after the latter's shares plummeted for a third day running, British media reported Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's manic dealmaking reached a new pitch on Wednesday as U.S. share prices plummeted to three-year lows and forced increasingly desperate major banks to scramble for merger partners.

LONDON - Embattled mortgage lender HBOS PLC confirmed Wednesday that it is in advanced talks about being taken over Lloyds TSB PLC in what would be a further reshaping of the financial industry amid the credit crisis.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A record rate of foreclosures probably kept many U.S. home builders off the job last month, pushing the rate of groundbreaking for new homes to its lowest level in more than 17 years, a Reuters poll showed.

The nationalisation of Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac, and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) take us into the most dangerous financial territory since the 1930s. Of course there are similarities to earlier crises. The attempts by Fannie and Freddie to trade their way out of problems on an outrageously thin capital base are redolent of the savings and loan fiasco of the 1980s. ...

LANSING, Mich. - Democrats in Michigan are trying to block what they call a Republican effort to deny voting rights to people facing foreclosure.

ZURICH (AFP) - Shares in UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank and one of the worst-hit by the subprime crisis, plunged more than 14 percent on Tuesday in the wake of investment giant Lehman Brothers' dramatic collapse.

NEW YORK - The government is increasingly likely to step in to help rescue the huge insurer AIG, a person with knowledge of the situation said Tuesday. AIG's failure could open the ugliest chapter yet of the financial meltdown.

(Reuters) - The recently ousted chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are eligible for the pensions and 401k savings plans they built up while working for the mortgage giants, The Wall Street Journal said, citing a regulatory official.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California law firm will sue Fannie Mae on Tuesday on behalf of holders of the mortgage finance company's preferred shares, a lawyer with the firm said late on Monday.

WASHINGTON - The federal government will offer a three month moratorium on mortgage foreclosures that are insured by the Federal Housing Authority to residents living in Texas and Louisiana disaster areas.

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. - Michigan's history of racial tensions is tugging against its Democratic tendencies, giving Barack Obama fits in a state where almost everything else — a soaring unemployment rate, a shrinking auto industry and a depressed housing market — potentially benefits Democrats.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators will not allow mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pay their departing chief executives multimillion-dollar severance packages outlined in their contracts, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

For many who work in government and finance, the Treasury department's takeover of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac means a change in the way they do business. But for the army of lobbyists that represent the companies, it means an end to business -- period.

Key Democratic lawmakers are looking toward resolving questions about the ultimate fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the Bush administration's move to take control of the mortgage giants.

Democratic lawmakers vowed to closely scrutinize the unprecedented government takeover Sunday of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while Republicans said it bolstered their calls for an overhaul of the mortgage giants.