Fannie Mae said it will tighten underwriting on adjustable-rate mortgages and “interest-only” loans that helped fuel the housing bubble.

Simon Property said in the latest quarter its vacancy rates held steady and rents edged higher as its tenants’ sales rose 6.6% from a year earlier.

More than 900 jobs are to be cut at Quinn Insurance as part of a restructuring plan the joint administrators of the company announced this afternoon.

Average Irish national house prices in Ireland fell by 4.8% in the first three months of 2010 according to the permanent tsb / ESRI House Price Index quarterly review published today. This compares to a reduction in Qtr 1 last year of 4.3% and a reduction of 7.7% in Qtr 4 2009. The year on year decline (Qtr 1 2009 to Qtr 1 2010) was 18.9% and compares to a reduction of 18.5% year on year to Qtr 4 2009.

Real US gross domestic product (GDP) increased at annualised 3.2 per cent rate in the first quarter of 2010 after increasing 5.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Real US gross domestic product (GDP) increased at annualised 3.2 per cent rate in the first quarter of 2010 after increasing 5.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Irish credit to non-financial corporations (NFCs), excluding valuation effects, as NFC credit fell by 4.6 per cent in the year ending March 2010, following annual declines of 3 per cent in January and 3.6 per cent in February 2010. Residential mortgage lending outstanding (including securitised mortgages) declined by €717 million during March, bringing the annual rate of decline in residential mortgage lending to minus 1.4 per cent.

Eurozone annual inflation is expected to be 1.5% in April 2010 according to a flash estimate issued by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. It was 1.4% in March. Meanwhile the unemployment rate in the Eurozone was steady at 10% in March. Germany was only EU country where the jobless rate fell in the 12 month period from March 2009.

Markets news on stocks, currencies and commodities; the Spanish unemployment rate rose to 20.05% from 18.83% in the fourth quarter of last year; Goldman Sachs: US federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into whether Goldman Sachs or its employees committed securities fraud in connection with its mortgage trading, people familiar with the probe say, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, in both the Eurozone (EA16) and the EU27, the seasonally adjusted household saving rate was 15.1% and 13.3% respectively. In the US the rate was 3.6% and in Japan just above 2.0% compared with 15% in 1990.