There is something special about a home with a front porch.  Long before the days of central air-conditioning, television, and the personal computer, almost every home had a front porch.  The front porch was a place where you could relax, sip lemonade, reflect on the events of the day, and wave to neighbors as they strolled by on those warm summer evenings.

This 4 Bedroom, 3 Full Baths, Cul De Sac Home, has so much to offer the homeowner.  The wonderful curb appeal greets you as the home comes into view.  Custom cut glass front doors open to the tile entry and flowing curved staircase.  Turn to the right and enter the expansive formal living room and dinning room.  Turn to the left for the comfortable family room, main floor bedroom and full bath.  

A new report released by the Brookings Institute found that school districts that made top marks on standardized tests came from students who lived in neighborhoods filled with $200,005 homes. The far-reaching implications of this study demonstrate how land-use and school policies shape the education landscape. As education systems assign students to schools based on the neighborhood their parents can afford, equal opportunity of education for low-income students is significantly reduced.

The Cost of $200,000 Homes

The size and layout of a house that costs $200,000 varies greatly from city to city; this slideshow  give a better idea of what a $200,000 home looks like. According to test performance data in 100 of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., homes near the best schools cost nearly 2.5 times as much (on average) as homes near lower-scoring public schools. Houses in high-scoring neighborhoods typically cost $11,000 more per year than those in lower-scoring neighborhoods. Thirty percent fewer are rented, and homes have 1.5 additional rooms in areas with better schools, according to the study. 

In addition to bulk boxes of Cheez-It crackers and discounted flat screen TVs, shoppers can now purchase ready-to-go mortgages at the wholesale depot Costco.

Partnering with First Choice Bank and ten other lenders, Costco now offers a mortgage lending program on its website. After a year of testing more than 10,000 mortgages, Costco will move into an aggressive promotion campaign to gather more members and provide a wider range of financial products.

"The Costco service, while offering competitive options for its members, still warrants comparison shopping and research," says Keith Gumbinger of the mortgage information company HSH.com. Gumbinger surmises that the Costco services may provide more opportunities to homeowners looking to refinance, than those looking to purchase a home. "The process of purchasing a home happens face-to-face, and isn’t yet suited for online transactions," Gumbinger says.

The gates have opened, but the flood hasn’t started. Bottlenecked foreclosures, locked up in the aftermath of the robo-signing scandal, are slowly trickling down the mainline. The past six months, at least since the release of 2011 numbers of foreclosed home sales, saw a lot of predictions of the housing market becoming paralyzed as foreclosures unfroze. 

According to new data released by LPS Applied Analytics, some of those early predictions were, in fact, incorrect. Foreclosure inventory remains near the historic highs seen at the end of 2010. Also in the report, even though first-time foreclosure starts in March hit a five-month high, newly started foreclosures were still down 31.1 percent from the same time last year—signs of an improving market. Mortgage delinquencies continue to decline, reaching the lowest level since 2008. Another positive turn, the number of homeowners who recently (within the past 6 months) defaulted on mortgage payments is down by 6.7 percent. 

Another analysis by CoreLogic found that foreclosure inventory is at it’s lowest since 2009, and that there were 69,000 completed foreclosures in March 2012, compared to 85,000 last year. Forty-nine percent of foreclosures completed this year occurred across five states: California, Florida, Michigan, Arizona, and Texas. These numbers are promising signs for Arizona and California, states that endured some of the worst market turmoil.