Mailbox: Condo Coercions, Short Shrift on Short Sales and Testing the Bath. My mailbox has been full of comments on recent columns about life in homeowners associations, uncertainty with short sales and deciding how much money to invest in a bathroom.

GE shares slide. BOSTON : General Electric Co shares fell as much as 10 percent on Thursday, touching a new 5-1/2-year low, as its sale of $15 billion in new stock to investors including Warren Buffett failed to soothe Wall..

HOK Sport Is a Free Agent. Practice responsible for more than 825 sports and event facilities becomes fully autonomous.

Coos Bay gives LNG project an extra year. A proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in Coos Bay has an extra year for development.

Winners and Losers As Loan Fees Change. The two biggest sources of mortgages for American home buyers plan to raise their base fees to counter what they call continuing "adverse conditions" in the real estate market.

Rick Engineering garners awards. Rick Engineering Co., a San Diego-based planning, engineering and surveying company, has been honored recently by two professional organizations for excellence.

Occoquan's Old-Time Charm Outlasts Calamity. Before dozens of cute shops, before the town-engulfing craft fairs, Occoquan's history had as many ups and downs as its topography. The old mill town was ravaged by fire in 1916.

No time to design the ballroom or choose the fountains? $17.5 million gets you a ready-made mansion today.. Have you noticed the empty mansions for sale? Sure, some extravagant new houses are on the market because times turned harder for the original buyers.

Silver Wheaton acquires quarter of silver output From Alexco's Keno Hill project. Silver Wheaton Corp. has agreed to pay US$50 million to acquire 25 per cent of the silver produced at the Keno Hill project from Alexco Resource Corp.

Buffett's $230M Chinese Investment. MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Several options for Burlingame Safeway parking to be studied Monday. City officials are going to be presented with multiple parking options for the Safeway project at Monday's study session.

Credit crisis hits global farming sector. Wall Street woes have washed down Main Street and yesterday plowed their way through farm country, leaving big companies that buy and sell to farmers with plummeting share prices and shaken outlooks.

Adapting Community Design to Anticipate Trends. There are walking trails, swimming pools and tennis courts. The landscape is well-maintained. If you didn't know better, you might think you were walking the grounds of a resort.

Sometimes, It's the Agent Who Wants to Break Up. Q In a recent column about listing agreements, you wrote that you never advise sellers to sign an agreement longer than 90 days. This poses a problem for me.

Warren Buffett invests $3 billion worth of General Electric preferred shares. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is buying $3 billion worth of General Electric preferred shares, even as the diversified conglomerate is preparing to sell at least $12 billion worth of common stock to the..

A Throwback To the McLean Before the Bustle. Before Tysons Corner boomed and the CIA's Langley headquarters was built, an ad for Broyhill McLean Estates urged folks to get in on a locale that was sure to escalate in value because of the coming "Chantilly airport" and "Circumferential Highway".

New Tax Credit Amounts To a Free Loan for $7,500. Anyone who has been hesitant about jumping into real estate until conditions settle down should keep in mind these dates: April 9, 2008, through June 30, 2009.

What It Takes to Create a Community. How do you turn 17,000 acres, 5,000 acres or even 300 acres into a single community that works?.

A Look at Congress's Long-Promised, Long-Delayed Mortgage Relief. After six months of haggling and political gamesmanship, a massive housing relief bill is heading for final approval.

Zacks Analyst Interview Highlights: Boeing, Fluor, KBR and URS Corp. Today's interview is with senior analyst John Nelson Simon, who talks about Boeing, Fluor, KBR, Inc.