Barron's - Johathan R. Laing - You don't need a Ph.D. in math to know that student-loan debt is compounding at an alarming rate. In the last six weeks alone, two new government reports have detailed the growing student debt burden, which has no doubt contributed to the weak economic recovery and could remain a drag on growth for decades to come. First came a report early last month from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York stating that the $870 billion in loans carried by some 37 million present and former students exceeded the money owed by all Americans for auto loans, as of the Sept. 30 end of the government's 2011 fiscal year. It's also greater than credit-card debt. The report went on to note that delinquencies, officially reported at about 10% of outstanding loans, were actually more than twice that number when things like loan-payment deferrals for current full-time students were properly accounted for.

Calculated Risk - This might speed up the short sale approval process, from Freddie Mac: Communication Time Lines for Short Sales.

The new requirements introduce specific response time frames for certain activities in the short sale process ... Effective for new evaluations conducted on or after June 15, 2012, Servicers must comply with the following minimum communication time frames for all short sales. If feasible, Servicers are encouraged to implement these changes prior to the effective date of June 15, 2012.

Every year, somebody publishes a list of which conventional home improvements will give you the best (or the worst) return on your remodeling investment.

The National Fair Housing Alliance and four member organizations on Tuesday filed the complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, following a similar complaint filed last week against Wells Fargo & Co. The group evaluated 177 foreclosed properties owned by U.S. Bank in seven cities as part of a larger evaluation of banks’ foreclosure-maintenance practices.

New York Times - The five largest kinds of tax breaks in 2011, broken down by the distribution of benefits to various income groups:

“Good News on Housing Permits More Than Offsets the Bad News on Starts”— HIS Global Insight

“Housing Starts Decline Again” – Capital Economics

“March Multifamily Starts Down; Permits Continue Upward Trend”— KBW

MBA - Mortgage applications increased 6.9 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 13, 2012.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 6.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 6.5 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 13.5 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 11.2 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 10.4 percent compared with the previous week and was 13.9 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

Another prime factor in the mother-in-law suite game is the growing size of today's home. In the 1950's the average size home was just over 1,000 square feet. Home today are double that size, coming in at over 2,300 square feet. There's simply more room for multiple generations.

Housing starts slipped 5.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 654,000 units, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday.

A total of 19,953 new and resale houses and condos sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month. That was up 28.1 percent from 15,573 in February, and up 2.8 percent from 19,412 in March 2011, according to San Diego-based DataQuick.

Wall Street Journal - Conor Dougherty - Manufacturing output slipped over the month. An index of U.S. manufacturing output fell 0.2% in March after a 0.8% increase a month earlier. Auto production posted solid gains, but those were offset by decreases in other areas such as furniture making. The factory sector has been a vital cog in the U.S. economic recovery but is expected to moderate this year.