Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) has initiated a new Deed to Lease program in which homeowners facing foreclosure will be able to stay in their homes as renters.

During the first half of the year, Fannie Mae has acquired 57,000 homes through foreclosure. These are owners who do not qualify for mortgage restructuring. They must demonstrate that they could not pay their mortgage but can pay rent. The rents paid are lower than their previous mortgage payment.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the bears simply won't hear the positives -- but he'll keep hammering them home.

Lots of things are coming together for housing, but nobody seems to care. We had Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) (Cramer's Take) the other day offer attractive interest-only mortgage loans to those in trouble, a bet that eventually housing will go higher. We had Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) allow people in trouble to rent to stay in their homes, and the government is going to extend the tax credit for homebuyers and broaden it. Plus, mortgage rates went under 5% again.

But nobody cared. No one.

Put this one under the the category of 'a half-loaf is better than none.'

Senate leaders are apparently poised to extend the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time home buyers, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

However, the extension will not please all in the housing sector, as the Senate is working on a plan that would extend the credit, which expires November 30, for homes that close before April 1, 2010. The credit would then be reduced to $6,000, then $4,000, then $2,000 for homes that close in each successive quarter, until the end of 2010, at which time the credit program would end.

People not only feel poorer, they are poorer. Personal wealth will continue to decline in 2010, as home prices fall even further, fueled by a wave of 7 million homes that will go into foreclosure in the next 12 to 18 months. And foreclosure rates will remain above historical norms well beyond that.

More foreclosures mean more downward price pressure in the housing market. And homeowners will experience a commensurate loss of wealth as the value of their homes decline. And this is on top of all the money that had previously been lost in the stock market -- as much as 40% of accumulated consumer wealth.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that housing starts rose a bit in September, helped by a rise in single-family home construction, but this bit of good news came with some bad news that applications for new home construction were down in the month.

According to the report, construction of new homes and apartments rose by 0.5% in the month, to an annualized rate of 590,000 units. While any growth for housing starts comes as good news in the current market, it is not as good as it appears at first glance, considering that analysts had been expecting to see the annualized rate increase to 610,000 units.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says stocks connected to the sector will take it on the chin if the housing index falls further.

A perusal of the charts this weekend shows something surprising: The weakest group out there has been the homebuilders for several weeks now. KB Home (NYSE: KBH) (Cramer's Take), D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI) (Cramer's Take), Lennar (NYSE: LEN) (Cramer's Take), and Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) (Cramer's Take) have simply been a horror show. What's going on here? How can these stocks be so dangerous when mortgage rates have crashed through 5%, the level that every banker I talk to says mortgages jump off the table and refinancings rush to be done.

What's going on? This group's tracking more than just mortgage rates. It's tracking employment and news flow and both are terrible.

No one thinks good times are here again. Unemployment is too high and will most likely get worse before everyone agrees that the recession is over. (If you're one of the many jobless who have been looking for months for a job, this is a depression, not a recession.)

No, times aren't good yet. But there are signs, both anecdotal and data driven, that show the worst is most likely over. Many of these signs aren't very visible. They don't make headlines, yet they do give credence to the idea that consumers are starting to spend, that the economy has stopped its downward spiral.

A little more good news for the struggling housing market Tuesday, as a closely watched home price index showed increases in prices for the third straight month in July.

The news comes from the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index, which shows that home prices rose by 1.2% from June to July.

The housing market got two pieces of bad news Friday. The first being weaker-than-expected earnings for KB Home (NYSE: KBH) and the second being a less-than-expected rise in new home sales last month.

First, the good news. New home sales did rise last month. In the current economic environment, that by itself is good news. Unfortunately the rise was less than analysts had been expecting to see.

California based home builder KB Home (NYSE: KBH) will have its turn to impress Wall Street Friday morning when it reports its third quarter earnings numbers.

The last time that KB Home reported earnings was back on June 26 when it missed analyst estimates miserably. Analysts had been expecting to see the company show a loss of 64 cents per share for its second quarter, but the actual earning were much worse, with a loss of $1.03.

After four months of gains in existing home sales, July saw a dip of 2.7 percent in home resales, a slight speed bump for the recovering housing market.

While today's news does cast a small shadow on the hopes of a housing rebound, there are still plenty of reasons to think that the housing market has bottomed out.

In another sign that the housing market may be emerging from its slump, applications for mortgages rose last week by a nice 12.8 percent.

The news comes from the Mortgage Bankers Association which stated that its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications rose to 668.5, which is the highest that the index has read since back on May 22.

Shares of homebuilder Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN) have been taking a beating today following weaker than expected earnings for its fiscal third quarter.

Traders have pushed shares of the company down over 5% after the company reported that it had lost 97 cents per share for the period. This was a much wider loss than the 46 cents per share that analysts had been expecting to see from the Miami based company.

It's almost October and the pundits are at again, predicting that the market should sell off again. Let's look at their reasoning.

• We have an ongoing deterioration in consumer debt.
• Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate, says that "the U.S. banking sector is now in worse shape than before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
• Bank profitability is expected to come under pressure.
• The U.S. housing outlook is grim.

The U.S. Treasury Department says that 6 million Americans face foreclosure in the next three years.

This number is shocking. What is being done to stem this bloodletting? The Treasury has a program to rework existing mortgages for people who qualify. So far only 360,165 people have had their mortgages reduced through August, up from 235,247 in July.

The Treasury's program is called the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The program pays cash to servicers to reduce mortgage payments to 31% of a borrowers income.