BusinessWeek recently ran an interesting story about homeowners who are paying a whopping 50 percent — or more — of their monthly incomes on mortgage and other housing payments. You can read the story here.

According to a Sept. 29 story by Bloomberg News, which you can read here, officials with the National Association of Home Builders are asking members of Congress to pass a $15,000 tax credit for all homebuyers. This, officials with the trade association hope, will entice consumers to purchase homes.

The National Association of Home Builders recently reported — citing statistics from the Commerce Department — that the sales of newly built single-family homes fell 11.5 percent in August.

The latest bit of creative genius that I’ve discovered comes by way of The New York Times, which details the story of a couple who, unable to sell a home that was nearing foreclosure, held a raffle to get the home off their hands. Yes, a raffle.

The big reason behind WaMu’s failure is no surprise: Its home-loan business sunk the bank. WaMu had way too much in mortgage-related losses.

Election officials and voting-rights groups are worried that many of the millions of U.S. homeowners who lost their residences to foreclosure will also lose their chance to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Homeowners in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach area spent a whopping 58 percent of their income on mortgage payments. That’s an amazing figure. Ideally, a home should not suck up more than 30 percent of its owner’s income. I can’t imagine spending more than half of my income on mortgage payments.

Preston is secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In a recent story in the Christian Science Monitor, Preston predicted that any improvements in the U.S. housing market are a year away.

RealtyTrac, an online provider of foreclosure information, reported that foreclosure activity rose once again in August. This time, activity rose by 12 percent.

Today, though, real estate pros aren’t as quick to boast about the impact the housing industry is having on the country’s finances. Maybe that’s because the residential real estate industry is now being blamed for everything from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch to the recent bailout of insurance giant AIG.