As we approach the seventh anniversary of 9/11, it is clear that the rebuilding of Ground Zero has failed. A recent editorial column in this newspaper by Daniel Henninger made the sad and insightful observation that even the coming together inspired by that awful event came apart as the process itself unraveled. He called the rebuilding arguably the greatest political and bureaucratic fiasco in the history of the world.

Hedge-fund manager John Paulson made more than $3 billion last year through smart bets, but his Hamptons house has sat on the market since spring and he recently shaved $2.6 million from the price, lowering it to $16.9 million.

SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. -- Related Cos. has built signature buildings that helped to transform neighborhoods in Manhattan, Phoenix and South Florida. Now, the big-market developer is attempting a $3 billion redevelopment to transform this prosperous Colorado ski town.

Related's efforts to revamp the core of Snowmass Village, seven miles west of Aspen, is among the latest and most ambitious of many projects designed to overhaul Western America's aging ski towns -- many of which were built in the 1960s and 1970s.

MADRID -- Spanish home sales and new mortgage approvals fell sharply again in June, signaling continued pressure on Spain's once-flourishing home-building industry that fed the country's decadelong economic boom.

Home sales fell at an annual rate of 29.6% in June, while the number of new mortgages fell 37.7%, data released Thursday by Spain's National Statistics Institute, or INE, showed. In May, annual home sales plunged 34.3%, and the number of new mortgages fell 36.2%.

NEW YORK -- Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced that he has arrested and indicted highflying real-estate investor Adam Hochfelder for allegedly "stealing more than $17 million from a panoply of banks and individuals."

Mr. Hochfelder, who dazzled the New York real-estate industry in the late 1990s, when he could buy trophy properties less than 10 years out of college, was charged with grand larceny, forgery, falsifying business records and other crimes. The most serious charge, grand larceny, is punishable by as many as 25 years in prison.

The Federal Housing Administration, a U.S. agency that is rapidly shouldering more of the risk on home loans, raised the premiums it charges for insuring that mortgages will be repaid.

In a posting on its Web site Tuesday, the FHA said the upfront premiums charged to most borrowers will be 1.75% of the loan amount, effective Oct. 1. That is up from the 1.5% that was in effect until July 14, when the FHA adopted a "risk-based" pricing system that created a range of charges depending on borrowers' credit scores and the amount of the down payment or equity they owned in the homes. In late July, Congress approved a housing bill that included a provision requiring the FHA to revert to a standard premium at least until Oct. 1, 2009.

Three months ago, Eric Gray saw an opportunity to scoop up a vacant retail property in New York City's borough of Brooklyn. But he had a problem, one that has been plaguing many real-estate investors and owners: The nation's banks, burned by years of easy credit and the resulting devastating losses, are no longer eager to lend.

So Mr. Gray turned to an unlikely source for money -- a hedge fund. He took out a one-year, $2.3 million loan from Madison Realty Capital to pay for the $3.7 million property.

With each economic release related to the state of the housing market comes the hope that this one, finally, will prove that the residential real-estate market is on the way to recovery.

But disappointment has been the overriding influence for those trading home-building stocks, which have made several attempts to rebound from devastating losses over the past three years, only to resume the previous downtrend.

Sales of existing homes rose 3.1% in July, compared with the June rate of sales, but the National Association of Realtors also said that housing supply grew once again, to a record 11.2 months of supply on the market. That is trouble for publicly traded sellers of new homes, which have been aggressively reducing inventory in an attempt to get ahead of the housing recession.

SOME OF THE nation's top economists figure the government's response to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has come to a critical turning point: They expect Treasury will be forced to inject funds into the two firms, but they're not sure whether pulling the trigger will be enough to bolster the sagging economy.

The woes of the two mortgage-lending giants were the talk of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual mountainside conference here in Jackson Hole, Wyo. When the central bankers, academics and Wall Street economists met a year ago, the housing-market troubles had just begun to deepen global-credit problems.

Home prices are improving in some parts of the country but still falling sharply in hard-hit places like Phoenix, as the weak housing market and shaky consumer confidence continue to weigh on the battered U.S. economy.

REAL TIME ECONOMICS 

DUBAI -- A police dragnet continues to widen among senior corporate executives here, in what appears to be a concerted push by government officials to put the shine back on this Mideast boomtown's damaged reputation.

Dubai officials have detained and are questioning one current and one former executive at Nakheel, the real-estate-development subsidiary of government-owned Dubai World. One of Nakheel's showcase projects is the Palm, an archipelago of man-made islands in the shape of a palm tree.

Tropicana Entertainment LLC has decided to put one of its riverboat casinos on the auction block after delaying for months a proposed $220 million sale.

The company is seeking approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., to remarket the Evansville, Ind., Casino Aztar, which it has been trying to sell since late 2007.

Tropicana in March agreed to sell the casino to Reno, Nev., hotel and casino operator Eldorado Resorts LLC for $220 million, but filed for bankruptcy protection before the sale could close. The future of the casino has been in limbo ever since. Eldorado earlier this month asked a judge to force Tropicana to decide whether it wanted to sell the assets.

The Vail, Colo., ski retreat that President Gerald Ford owned for about a quarter century is on the market for the second time in less than two years, asking $14.9 million.

TOKYO -- Japan has seen a raft of property developers go to the wall this year as banks have refused to refinance their loans. Analysts say the bankruptcy filings are likely to set off a vicious cycle that will weigh on the sector's shares in the coming months.

The reason: Real-estate firms that have run into financial difficulty are selling off assets at fire-sale prices, which will put the value of properties under strain.

So far this year, 8,916 companies have filed for bankruptcy in Japan, a third of which were in construction or real estate, according to data compiler Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. Big blowups include real-estate management firm Reicof and condominium developer Suruga. Just last week, Urban Corp., a Hiroshima-based condominium developer and sales agent, filed for bankruptcy.

CHESTER, Va. -- Barack Obama hammered at rival John McCain's personal wealth, part of the Democrat's more-focused message on the economy and the latest sign Sen. Obama is adopting attack politics to define his opponent.

Sen. McCain "said the economy is fundamentally strong," Sen. Obama told 250 people gathered outside John Tyler Community College. "If you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising that you might think the economy was fundamentally strong."

High gas prices and growing environmental concerns are making more home buyers interested in bicycle-friendly neighborhoods. Seeing a market, some real-estate agents have traded their suits for spandex and are leading clients from house to house on two wheels instead of four.

While the development is nascent, agents in many areas of the country are offering home tours by bike. Craig Della Penna of Murphys Realtors Inc. in Northampton, Mass., started the service more than a year ago when he realized it would help clients judge whether properties are easily accessible to bike paths. "Because of the bike niche, I have new calls coming in every week," he says. Mr. Della Penna estimates about half of his 18 closings last year came about because he emphasized homes near bike trails.

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

For the past year, apartment buildings have been one of the few bright spots in the real-estate industry as people forced out of the home-buying market by foreclosures or the credit crunch have turned to renting.

But now the specter of job losses is beginning to spread the gloom into that sector as well. As would-be renters are doubling up in apartments or moving in with friends and families, rents and occupancy rates are beginning to fall in many cities.

To see how difficult the condominium-development market has become, consider the plight of 100 Eleventh Ave., which was designed to be one of the hottest addresses in New York.

Kurt Wilberding/The Wall Street Journal Developers Craig Wood and Curtis Bashaw have seen their condo development 100 Eleventh Ave. in Manhattan hit some bumps.

Some 1,000 miles from the Olympic Games in Beijing, China's manufacturing hub of Guangzhou is preparing for its own moment in the sports spotlight as it gears up to host the Asian Games in 2010. In the works are ultramodern skyscrapers, new stadiums and a 2,000-foot-high television and sightseeing structure that is slated to be nearly double the height of the Eiffel Tower.

WASHINGTON -- The federal government threw a lifeline to borrowers of failed thrift IndyMac Bancorp Inc., unveiling a plan to quickly modify thousands of mortgages to keep consumers in their homes and limit the government's potential losses from taking over the firm.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the modification would combine interest-rate reductions, longer repayment periods and principal forbearance on first mortgages either held or securitized by IndyMac. The agency said it will send new loan terms to around 4,000 borrowers this week, with a target of about 25,000 offers in the coming weeks.

Freddie Mac was forced to offer unusually rich terms to investors in a $3 billion auction of its debt, raising anew concerns about the health of the mortgage giant, a vital prop for the U.S. housing market.

Investors increasingly believe the U.S. government will take steps to rescue Freddie Mac and its sibling, Fannie Mae. The Treasury Department recently received authority from Congress to bail out the two companies, although it stopped short of doing so. Both now play a dominant role in financing mortgages. A rise in the companies' borrowing costs could translate into higher mortgage rates for consumers, prolonging the housing slump.

LONDON -- Alliance & Leicester PLC, a British bank, sold about £400 million ($747 million) of high-quality bonds backed by home loans this week, in a rare sign of life in the market for mortgage securities.

However, bankers say the U.K. lender's Monday sale isn't yet a sign of growing momentum in the mortgage-finance market, which has been a ghost town since the credit crunch last summer.

In an early sign that investors are starting to pounce on the billions of dollars of troubled land and construction loans that banks are looking to unload, a venture headed by LandCap Partners is buying $40 million of such assets from Wachovia Corp.

LandCap, a residential-land company headed by real-estate veteran Jeffrey Gault, has created a joint venture that will buy the loans which have a book value of $75 million to $80 million, according to people familiar with the deal.

Macau -- With his grip on Asia's gambling capital slipping, Stanley Ho has gone on the offensive.

Last month, the Hong Kong-born gambling magnate announced plans to tear down his flagship Lisboa casino and hotel and build his biggest and most opulent showcase yet, at a cost of HK$12 billion (US$1.54 billion). The 86-year-old also pushed through a long-delayed initial public offering for the company he controls, SJM Holdings Ltd., raising $494 million despite stock-market jitters.

When British Land PLC, the U.K. property group, reports fiscal-first-quarter earnings Thursday, it will most likely confirm what is becoming increasingly clear about the European property sector: The troubles are far from over.

Financial reports by property companies such as Liberty International PLC and Hammerson PLC have held some unpleasant surprises. Not only is it obvious that property yields are continuing to widen, causing property values in the U.K. and throughout continental Europe to decline. Perhaps more unexpected, said analysts and investors, is the possibility that some commercial property could soon be valued at less than the loans on the property. This could turn the subprime-mortgage debacle into a commercial-property crisis.

HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's former top housing official stepped down from his new post as an executive at one of the city's most prominent property developers, as the company acknowledged accusations of a conflict of interest had taken a political toll.

When it comes to housing, it's a buyer's market -- especially for first-time home buyers eligible for new tax breaks.

The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, passed by Congress at the end of July with hopes of shoring up the ailing housing market, also includes an important tax break. First-time home buyers who purchase a home after April 8, 2008, and before July 1, 2009, are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit (or, if the home costs less than $75,000, a credit equal to 10% of the purchase price).

The Amish have long been famous for barn raisings. Now, they're becoming known for building houses for the non-Amish, often using ancient construction techniques.

About 600 Amish contractors or subcontractors work in at least a dozen states, a rapid increase over the past decade, says Donald B. Kraybill, who has written more than a dozen books on the conservative Christian sect. Not only do some of them specialize in the timber-frame construction method that doesn't use nails, they often can erect a house faster and for less money than traditional contractors, customers say.

Congress and the Bush administration so far have failed to end a foreclosure crisis that is ejecting hundreds of thousands of American families from their homes. Can Donald Trump save the day?

The owners of the 1,230-unit, rent-controlled Riverton Apartments in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood anticipate defaulting on the property's $225 million mortgage by next month, marking one of the housing bust's largest collapses of a New York City residential development.

Developers Rockpoint Group LLC and Stellar Management have told the mortgage's servicer that they made minimal progress toward their goal of converting half of the 61-year-old complex's units to market-rate housing since obtaining the mortgage in December 2006, according to Trepp LLC, a data-and-analytics provider that tracks commercial-mortgage securities.

Twenty years ago the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, Calif., existed in people's minds more as a photograph in numberless histories of architecture than as a place many of us had seen in person. Ray Eames, the widow of Charles, lived here until her death in 1988, and unless you were a friend of hers or a devoted student of California modernism with the right connections, chances were nil you could inspect one of the most celebrated private homes built in postwar America.

WASHINGTON -- Home mortgage rates stayed mostly flat this week, as fresh economic and housing data sent mixed signals to the market, Freddie Mac's chief economist said Thursday.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage didn't change at all from last week, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey, remaining an average 6.52% on a nationwide basis. The mortgage averaged 6.62% a year ago.

The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage slipped just slightly, averaging 6.07% for the week ending Aug. 14, down from 6.10% last week and the year-earlier 6.30%.

Office and retail developer Vornado Realty Trust struck a joint venture with Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd. to spend $500 million building and operating shopping centers in India, signaling the latest effort by a U.S. retail developer to expand abroad.

Vornado, of the U.S., and Reliance will spend $250 million each to buy and build shopping centers spanning 500,000 to one million square feet in Indian cities. Many of the centers will be anchored by a hypermarket -- a massive store selling both groceries and general merchandise -- operated by Reliance.

Stuck with a growing glut of foreclosed houses, banks and investors are shedding them at increasingly steep losses, potentially adding to the banking industry's red ink this year.

Banks are selling foreclosed homes in some cases for less than half the price they fetched two or three years ago. The cuts are coming as the U.S. banking sector, slogging through its worst crisis in decades, bites the bullet out of fear that prices will keep falling.

DUBAI -- Cracks are starting to show in Dubai's well-crafted and glitzy property-marketing machine.

Flipping properties has reached such a feverish pace, driving up prices, that Dubai's Real Estate Regulatory Authority, or RERA, is looking at measures to crack down on the practice, which involves quickly reselling property at a profit.

Meantime, a series of legal tussles and property-related scandals have rocked investor confidence, and analysts are forecasting that property prices, which have risen sharply in a matter of months, could tumble by as much as 10%, hurt by oversupply.

A steep decline in the stock price of General Growth Properties Inc. prompted a top executive of the company to sell half of his common shares this week to cover a margin call.

Bob Michaels, General Growth's president and chief operating officer, sold 700,000 shares Tuesday at an average price of $27.13, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The sale left Mr. Michaels with 690,507 common shares in General Growth, which develops and owns shopping malls.

Suzanne and Dave Francione figured they could reduce their heating bill by $1,300 this winter by switching from oil to natural gas, so they called the utility company and plumbers. That was in May. Today, the couple is still waiting on their conversion, which won't be done until September because of a growing backlog of other Northeasterners desperate to abandon costly heating oil.

"We were watching the price of oil escalate" and determined that the winter heating-oil bill would hit $3,000, says Mr. Francione, a Needham, Mass., investment banker. "That's when we decided to convert."

Fannie Mae reported a wider-than-expected second-quarter loss of $2.3 billion and said it expects more heavy losses from the surge in home-mortgage defaults.

Mounting losses at both Fannie and Freddie Mac, the two main providers of money for home mortgages, are limiting their ability to buy and guarantee home loans. That may mean higher interest costs for consumers.

CONFERENCE CALL 

As head of the giant investment firm that controls ailing Chrysler, Stephen Feinberg has a fixer-upper on his hands.

As a homeowner, he's been in a similar predicament for years.

David M. Russell for The Wall Street Journal This 103-year-old building in Manhattan has been a major renovation project.

Even reality television isn't immune from the current real-estate downturn.

"Hope for Your Home," the newest addition to TLC's slate of property-related reality programming, is a direct response to the needs of financially-strained homeowners. Eschewing emotional hysterics in favor of pragmatics, each half-hour show provides participating families with tangible advice on how best to increase the value of their home so they can sell or refinance. The show debuts Saturday at 8:30 p.m. EDT.

Five of the nation's largest credit unions are reporting big paper losses on mortgage-related securities, a sign that housing-market distress is spreading even to the most risk-averse financial sectors.

The federal regulator overseeing credit unions says the losses are likely to be reversed when mortgage markets stabilize, and that the institutions are sound and adequately capitalized. But some outside observers are concerned that the credit unions are underestimating the depth of their mortgage-market problems.

LOS ANGELES -- The Securities and Exchange Commission escalated its scrutiny of Countrywide Financial Corp. into a formal investigation, according to a regulatory filing by Bank of America Corp.

The document didn't specify what aspect of the lender the SEC's probe is focused on, although regulators launched an informal inquiry into Countrywide Chairman and CEO Angelo Mozilo's stock trades last fall.

Representatives for Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America and Countrywide declined to comment beyond the filing Friday.

Hollywood couple Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn have put their San Francisco-area home on the market for $15 million.

Sean Penn's San Francisco home

Beazer Homes USA Inc. reported a narrowed fiscal third-quarter loss as the company slashed its land and land-development spending but continued to see home closings, sales prices and new orders slide.

Chief Executive Ian J. McCarthy said as "potential home buyers remain reluctant due to eroding consumer confidence amid concerns about employment growth, higher energy costs and the overall economy," the company expects "challenging" industry conditions will continue, and is maintaining "a disciplined and cautious operating approach."

Denver

Anticipating a crush of attendees at the Democratic National Convention this month and a shortage of hotel rooms, some Denver residents are renting out their homes at mile-high prices.

BERLIN -- The global hotel industry is in panic mode as the effects of the U.S. credit crunch spread, high oil prices threaten to curtail travel and the broader economic outlook dims.

Just don't tell Horst Schulze, the former president and chief operating officer of Ritz-Carlton. The 68-year-old Mr. Schulze now runs hotel-management company West Paces Hotel Group, which was started by him and former Ritz-Carlton executives and operates the premier Capella brand.

Moscow

When Robert Jenkin, CEO of a multimillion-dollar property firm, travels, he stays in four- and five-star hotels in Tokyo, New York and most other major cities. In Moscow, he rents apartments, braving shabby stairwells, Soviet-era furnishings and sketchy management agencies.

As one of the most powerful chief financial officers among U.S. mall owners, Bernie Freibaum has held considerable sway for years over financial backers of General Growth Properties Inc.

But as Mr. Freibaum begins to refinance General Growth's $18.4 billion in debt that comes due during the next 3½ years, he is finding that the tables have turned, and lenders are making the most of their new negotiating strength. Industry executives are watching to see how lenders treat companies that have valuable assets yet are saddled with massive debt.

The Treasury Department, which recently received authority to help shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hired Morgan Stanley to provide "market analysis and financial expertise" in connection with its rescue plan.

Congress recently agreed to allow the Treasury to provide an unlimited line of credit to the mortgage titans and take an equity stake in either company over the next 18 months. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said he has no plans to use the agency's new authority but had asked for it to help reassure the markets.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has sued Bank of America Corp.'s Countrywide Financial Corp. for allegedly deceptive lending practices.

Echoing the many other legal complaints against the mortgage lender, the Connecticut lawsuit alleges Countrywide engaged in several types of inappropriate lending behavior and made loans to consumers that were unaffordable or unsuitable for the borrower. The complaint, filed in state court in Hartford, alleges violations of Connecticut's unfair trade practices and banking laws.

IndyMac Bancorp Inc., the failed California mortgage lender whose bank was seized by regulators last month, filed for Chapter 7 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles.

The holding company's bankruptcy filing was widely expected. It doesn't include IndyMac Federal Bank FSB, which is run by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and is the successor to IndyMac's former banking unit. IndyMac Bank, the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history, was taken over by the FDIC last month after a run on the bank. IndyMac Federal Bank FSB said it isn't affected by the bankruptcy filing of IndyMac Bancorp.

Burl East is looking for a good deal on a foreclosed house. Make that a good deal on 1,500 foreclosed houses.

Mr. East, a managing principal of Silver Portal Capital LLC, a small real-estate investment bank, is raising $150 million to purchase foreclosed houses in and around the firm's hometown of San Diego. He is scouring lender portfolios and real-estate listing services -- as well as spots to get a cup of coffee -- for houses that he can rent out and then resell in five years. That is when he bets that the local housing market will have recovered.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, trying to contain mortgage-default losses, are redoubling efforts to prevent foreclosures.

In some cases, though, these moves may only delay the inevitable, easing pressure on the companies' finances in the short term without resolving their troubles.

The two U.S.-government-sponsored guarantors of home loans last week said they will increase fees they pay loan-servicing companies for "workouts" that prevent foreclosures. (Servicing companies collect loan payments and handle other administrative tasks.) Freddie also said it will give servicers more time to pursue such workouts.

Bankrupt retailer Steve & Barry's LLC stepped back from the brink of liquidation, agreeing to be acquired by turnaround specialist Bay Harbour Management LC for $163 million.

Bay Harbour plans to operate the chain store as a going concern, so long as a deal on renegotiated leases can be reached. The ability of Steve & Barry's to stay in business would be a godsend to mall owners across the country, who ponied up hundreds of millions of dollars to attract the stores into huge, empty spaces, often as large as 100,000 square feet.

London's historic financial center is losing a marquee bank -- to real-estate rival Canary Wharf. After efforts to build a new headquarters in the City, as the square-mile area is known, ran into problems, J.P. Morgan Chase said Friday it would instead move to Canary Wharf, the rival financial district developed over the past two decades.

A recent improvement in beleaguered home-equity loans has been a rare sign of encouragement for banks. But bullish investors need to remove their rose-colored glasses.

Banks have about $700 billion of home-equity loans -- in which a bank lends money to a homeowner against the equity in his house. That includes both fixed-rate loans and floating-rate debt drawn from credit lines. Lenders usually can't collect on a defaulted home-equity loan by seizing a house unless the borrower has no mortgage, since mortgage lenders have first claim.

When Skanska AB secured the contract last week to manage the $500 million renovation of New York City's Madison Square Garden, it was the latest coup for a company that has racked up a string of high-profile projects across the U.S.

The Stockholm-based company, one of the world's largest construction firms, also is leading the renovation of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, building a new American football stadium for the New York Giants in New Jersey and is involved with constructing the $2.2 billion transportation hub in the World Trade Center rebuilding.

Like many harried people, when we're stressed we forget things, like the milk we meant to grab at the grocery store. We also forget to stow our house keys in pockets and pocketbooks -- which means we occasionally must call a 24-hour locksmith service to help us break back into our own home.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell whether a locksmith is reputable -- particularly when you're locked out and relying on directory assistance or a neighbor's Internet connection. The Council of Better Business Bureaus and the Federal Trade Commission both issued warnings about some locksmiths' business and pricing practices in 2007, and Associated Locksmiths of America, a Dallas-based trade group with more than 10,000 members, advocates that members petition their states to require locksmith licensing. Preliminary data from the Council of Better Business Bureaus show that complaints about locksmiths more than doubled from 2005 to 2007, from 247 to 560.

Less than two years after auctioning off the contents of her Malibu, Calif., mansion, singer Cher has put the Italian Renaissance-style villa on the market for $45 million.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Dennis Pflueger and his wife won a rent-free year in a nice new house in an expensive subdivision not far from the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. As part of the prize, they then have the option to buy the four-bedroom home for $452,000.

Mr. Pflueger, a telephone-cable installer who describes himself as an "old redneck," is in the middle of his free year. But the Pfluegers are a bit lonely. Just one other family lives in any of the 28 new or unfinished houses on Foxboro Court. Up the street, a sign announcing "Elegant Homes" sits on a lot choked with weeds. The block is as quiet as an old ghost town.

Helena Peterson's favorite show these days depicts shadows flickering on artwork and furniture in a deserted dining room.

It's not an avant-garde production but a Webcam view of the vacation house that Ms. Peterson bought last year in Southport, N.C. Using a computer at her primary home in Ellsworth, Maine, she monitors the house in the tiny fishing town via an Internet connection. Though there's little to see she says she finds it mesmerizing -- and a way to spend time, at least virtually, in her second home while stuck at her first one. "It's a fantasy experience," says Ms. Peterson, a public-health program director.

The housing bill signed Wednesday by President George W. Bush will provide a stream of billions of dollars for distressed homeowners and communities and the nonprofit groups that serve them.

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush signed a housing-rescue bill into law Wednesday, completing Congress's ambitious legislative effort to head off rising foreclosures and stabilize jittery financial markets.

The law is wide-ranging and could have a big impact on home buyers, lenders and investment banks, and an even bigger effect on housing-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Until recently, the biggest challenge facing iStar Financial Inc. was how it would handle billions of dollars of loans and funding commitments to condominium developers that it picked up when it acquired Fremont General Corp. a year ago, the kinds of assets that have higher chances of default in today's housing slump.

Now, the big question is whether iStar can maintain its investment-grade credit rating, on which its lending business is predicated.