Drought is undermining home foundations

This year's oppressive drought is causing problems for thousands of homeowners across the Midwest. Soil has been sucked dry of moisture, causing homes to sink into the earth, cracking foundations and walls that must undergo repairs. Drought related home damage has been reported is 40 states, and the total amount of damage could reach $1 billion, Jim Salter of The Associated Press reports. (AP photo by Jeff Roberson: Repairmen fix drought damage in Missouri)

Repairs usually cost thousands, can run into six figures, and often aren't covered by insurance. Home-repair businesses, especially those dealing with basements and foundations, can barely keep up with demand. Homes in the central U.S., from Louisiana up through the Dakotas, are bearing the brunt of such damage, but damage is being reported throughout the country. Dayton-based Basement Health Association board member Dan Jaggers told Salter this year's drought has been the worst for homes since the 1950s. (Read more)

West's timber industry booming, mainly via exports

The timber industry is making a comeback in Western states, and boosting the economies of rural towns in the process. Demand for timber used in construction plummeted when the housing market crashed in 2009, and it's been slow to recover. But, as Justin Scheck of The Wall Street Journal reports, the "boom-trend" is "part of a West Coast logging rebound" driven mostly by exports.

Overseas wood shipments more than doubled from 2008 to 2011, according to RISI International Wood Markets Group, a timber research group, and U.S. Forest Service data shows log exports increasing by 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2012, Scheck reports. The increase has reopened some sawmills, raising employment in rural areas and causing "an uptick in local spending and new stores," Scheck reports. (Read more)

Rural areas have higher home ownership than national average, much of it free and clear of debt

Amid all the talk about home ownership being harder and harder to obtain -- and it is -- reporter Lance George has uncovered some revealing statistics about who has done the best job of settling in and paying on a mortgage, and of paying it off. George, writing in the Daily Yonder, cites census and federal housing data showing that in 2010, 65.1 percent of U.S. homes were occupied by their owners. In rural communities, the number was 71.6 percent.

Home ownership, the reporter notes, varies across demographic groups, and among regions within rural and small-town America. It is highest in the Midwest, at 74 percent, and lowest in the West, at 68 percent. "Delaware has the highest rural and small-town homeownership rate, at 77.8 percent, followed closely by Minnesota and Michigan, at 77 percent."

The biggest rural-urban disparity in the data was free and clear ownership. "Nearly 42 percent of homeowners in rural and small town America own their homes free and clear of mortgage debt, compared to roughly 27 percent of suburban and urban homeowners with no mortgage," George reports, offering possible reasons: a large number of manufactured homes with shorter loan terms and an older demographic; mortgage debt declines with age. (Read more)