House hunters are the beneficiaries of a historically high affordability conditions that could help further propel the housing sector's improvement. 

In all, 73.7 percent of new and existing homes sold between the January through March quarter were affordable to families earning the U.S. median income of $64,400, according to a National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI), released on Tuesday.

The figure is down slightly from the 74.9 percent in the final quarter of last year. The index has not dropped below 70 since the end of 2008. 

"Thanks to very favorable mortgage rates and prices, housing affordability has remained quite high over the past four years," said NAHB Chairman Rick Judson, a home builder from Charlotte, N.C. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants financial regulators to justify their policy of settling charges with Wall Street's bad actors out of court.

In a letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve and Justice Department, Warren demanded any analysis regulators have undertaken that justifies a policy of pursuing settlements where the parties involved do not have to admit to wrongdoing.

Warren argued that regulators who too readily settle could end up obtaining insufficient compensation for victims while doing little to deter similar actions in the future.

"I believe strongly that if a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial — either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources — the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations," Warren wrote in the letter.

"If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law."

IRS, other scandals could make it harder for Obama to govern. Read more...

Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, on Tuesday apologized for the growing scandal over the political targeting of conservative groups and said the agency “should have done a better job.”

Officials in Washington, D.C., and California sent questionnaires to Tea Party groups asking about their voter outreach efforts.

The uphill battle to simplify the complex tax code by winnowing tax breaks and lowering tax rates could take a step back.

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said Monday that it's hard to believe that IRS officials didn't tell lawmakers about the agency's targeting of Tea Party groups for a year.

Camp, whose panel is holding a hearing on the matter on Friday, said that the agency's apologies won't cut it, and that IRS officials should be prepared to answer tough questions.

“It is almost inconceivable to imagine that top officials at the IRS knew conservative groups were being targeted but chose to willfully mislead the committee’s investigation into this practice," Camp said in a statement. Read more...

The White House and top lawmakers from both parties on Monday called for broad investigations of the IRS.

Steven Miller, now the acting IRS commissioner, found out over a year ago that the agency was singling out Tea Party and conservative groups, the IRS said Monday.

The agency said that its tax-exempt and government entities division told Miller, then deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, about the improper scrutiny on May 3, 2012. Lois Lerner, who heads the section that oversees tax-exempt groups, first disclosed the targeting of Tea Party groups on Friday.

The IRS statement fleshes out the timeline of when top agency officials found about the attention given to Tea Party groups, but could also lead to other questions for Miller and agency brass as well.

Agency staffers told Miller about the scrutiny given Tea Party groups more than a month after the then-IRS commissioner, Doug Shulman, told lawmakers that the agency did not single out any groups for partisan reasons. Read more...