With vacancy rates in the office market at record-high levels, it would seem that the options for tenants are endless. But that might not be the case. According to Grubb & Ellis, a real estate services and investment firm based in Santa Ana, California, the amount of available space in the U.S. office market may be overstated, giving tenants fewer realistic alternatives than previously indicated. In a phenomenon dubbed ""zombie buildings"" by Grubb & Ellis researchers, there are many properties that have significant capital constraints and are therefore unable to fund market-level tenant improvement allowances and commissions.

Bolstered by purchase applications in the days leading up to the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit, total mortgage application volume increased 4 percent for the week ending April 30, 2010, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday. According to MBA's Weekly Mortgage Application Survey, the seasonally-adjusted purchase index surged 13 percent from the week prior, marking the third consecutive weekly increase in purchase applications and the highest purchase index recorded in the survey since the week ending October 2, 2009.

Countdown To Buy announced Tuesday that it has entered the Georgia marketplace and will be featuring recently foreclosed properties throughout the state. This sampling of properties comes after Countdown To Buy successfully matched buyers in 25 days or less with an initial set of pilot properties located in Texas, Connecticut, and Illinois. As a result of this success, a leading institution expanded their multi-state pilot into the Georgia market.

Realtor Cindy Simpson, head of the Simpson REO Team, was recently named by Prudential Georgia Realty as the No. 1 agent for most homes closed in 2009. This is the third consecutive year that Simpson and her team have received the No. 1 overall agent and No. 1 team for Prudential Georgia Realty.

Hoping to obtain advice on how to improve government foreclosure prevention programs, the Department of Treasury's Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability, Herb Allison, made an unprecedented stop in Cleveland on Monday to hold a roundtable and hear from local homeowners and housing advocates first-hand. Allison, who is second to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, oversees both the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the Hardest Hit Fund program that is providing more than $2.1 billion to address the foreclosure crisis in 10 states. Ohio is receiving $172 million through this program, the sixth highest allocation.

In an effort to provide greater insight into the health of the U.S. economy, Standard & Poor's and Experian have teamed up to create a series of consumer credit default indices that will seek to measure the balance-weighted proportion of consumer credit accounts that go into default for the first time each month.

The Miami metro area housing market is heating up. According to a report recently released by MDA DataQuick, a San Diego-based provider of property data, 6,658 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in March in the metro area encompassing Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward counties. This was the highest number of total escrow closings for March since 2007. As a result, total home sales were up 43.3 percent from February and were 43.1 percent higher than March 2009.

In yet another sign of stabilization within the U.S. housing market, pending home sales continued the climb upward in March, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported Tuesday. NAR's Pending Homes Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in March, rose 5.3 percent from February and was 21.1 percent above March of last year. This increase follows an 8.3 percent jump in February, and NAR says it affirms that a surge of home sales is unfolding for the spring home buying season.

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) announced Friday that it recently issued $5.6 million of tax-exempt bonds on behalf of New Hampshire House Associates, LLC. The proceeds of these bonds will be used to finance the acquisition and rehabilitation of a multifamily residential rental facility in Warren, Ohio. This project is OHFA's first multifamily transaction under the Treasury/government-sponsored enterprise HFA initiative, which was announced October 19, 2009.

Valligent, a Roseville, California-based provider of collateral valuation and risk management solutions, and Global DMS, a Lansdale, Pennsylvania-based provider of appraisal process management solutions, recently launched an end-to-end valuation service for ordering, managing, and delivering a full range of valuation products in MISMO-sanctioned XML data format -- all in full compliance with major guidelines and regulations.