According to the National Association of Realtors, pending home resales rose 7.4 percent – the most since October 2001 and the fourth such increase this year.

All regions of the country saw an increase in pending sales from July, with the West showing the largest increase of 18.4 percent.  The Northeast saw an 8.4 percent rise, the Midwest a 3.6 percent increase and 2.3 percent in the South.

According to reports, people are taking advantage of low home prices, and sales are up strongly in California, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

Although the likely reason for the rise in pending resales is investors buying up foreclosures, the fact remains that these houses are being taken off of the market, which has had a surplus of inventory.

Veronica Hearst, widow of famed publisher Randolph Hearst, was recently able to sell a New York property for a reported $36.5 million – enough to pay off her debt on her Manalapan mansion with some left over.

Hearst was behind on a $47 million mortgage from lender New Stream Capital.  In February, the lender paid $22 million at a foreclosure auction for the property.  The next month, it is reported that Franklin L. Haney paid New Stream $23.5 million for the 28,000 square foot mansion, cutting Hearst’s debt to New Stream in half.

The sale of the property in New York has settled her account completely and left her with some cash for herself, according to her attorney.

In terms of fixing what’s wrong with the real estate market, everyone has their own two cents and thinks their solution is more effective than another.  The fact of the matter is South Florida homes and properties around the country are not selling.  That problem can be attributed mostly to the whole subprime mortgage situation and the lack of a capable solution.

The Federal Housing Association (FHA) has quietly been running what many consider is a straightforward resolution behind the scenes called FHASecure.  This program adopts the simple approach of renegotiating mortgage financing terms for struggling homeowners so that they end up with a fixed rate and fixed monthly payment.

Strange as it may sound, subprime mortgages are actually not all that common which makes one wonder how it is then, that they’ve managed to cause so many problems.  A subprime mortgage carries a fixed interest rate which is only temporary, something many homeowners apparently didn’t realize until after the fixed term ended and payments subsequently skyrocketed to sums thousands of people simply could not afford giving them no choice but to end up defaulting and lose their cherished homes.

Using whatever resources the FHA itself has available, FHASecure has done wonders for a large majority of homeowners who fall mostly within the mid to lower class.  If the government decides to offer its own hefty resources towards it, FHASecure could be expanded so that it would assist even those borrowers who are scraping by and are considered to be high foreclosure risks.

A huge influx of monetary resources and government acknowledgement could potentially go a long way in reducing the country’s already overstuffed foreclosure inventory.  Could this be the answer that will get the real estate market out of its rut sooner than what market analysts and economists are anticipating?