NEW YORK, May 28 (Reuters) – Kate Carpenter and her husband waited for two years before sensing the time was right to look to buy a home in the suburbs of New York.

“This is the first time homes are at an affordable point,” said the freelance writer, 35.

She hopes to move her two young daughters out of their rented New York City apartment soon, taking advantage of record low mortgage rates and signs the slump is over.

Six years after the housing market began its slide, dragging the U.S. economy into recession, this year’s spring season – traditionally the busiest period for home sales — is shaping up to be the strongest since the crash.

Sales rose more than 10 percent in April from a year earlier and may end the year up by as much as 13 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Prices, which plunged by a third from 2006 according to some measures, are rising in some cities. Realtors report bidding wars, albeit more modest ones than during the bubble years, and buyers are snapping up homes much more quickly than only a few weeks ago.

“We have more buyers than we have houses to sell,” said April Bolin, a realtor in Riverside, California, considered one of the epicenters of the U.S. housing crash.

NEW YORK May 24 (Reuters) – It’s been less than a week since Facebook went public, and while the IPO made CEO Mark Zuckerberg and many others very wealthy, the botched way in which the offering was done has sparked investigations, lawsuits and regulatory threats. It has also sparked a lot of anger toward the social media company, lead underwriter Morgan Stanley and the Nasdaq stock market.

Here is a list of eight things that went wrong with the Facebook IPO – a “what not to do list” for the next big technology company considering a public listing, compiled from interviews with investors, traders, analysts, attorneys and regulators.

1. Charge too much. Facebook raised the price of its shares above a reasonable valuation given its earnings and revenue. The $38 price tag was 100 times historical earnings. By comparison, Apple Inc trades at 14 times historical earnings, while Google Inc is at 19 times. Facebook set the higher price despite a slowdown in recent months in its online advertising business and its concerns about the growing use of mobile devices, an area in which its advertising revenue is still weak.

2. Sell too much stock. Facebook floated 421 million shares worth around $16 billion at the offering price — the biggest ever U.S. technology company IPO. As soon there were some wrinkles, supply overwhelmed demand. Many bankers were especially concerned that Facebook demanded that a larger than usual block – about 25 percent – be set aside for ordinary investors, who typically are more willing to flip their purchase in the hope of a quick profit.

“The underwriters misjudged the amount of buy and hold demand relative to the amount of speculative demand,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, Florida, who plans to hold on to the 400 shares he bought in the IPO.

3. Fall for the hype. Facebook, Morgan Stanley and others believed the hype — some of it self-generated — that the company’s shares would pop 30 percent to 50 percent on the first day of trading, and miscalculated the demand. The event was “a perfect storm,” according to J. Robert Brown Jr., a law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in Denver, Colorado.

Facebook increased the number of shares at the last minute while bad news was coming out. Then delays in the start of trading on Nasdaq and later disruptions in matching buy and sell orders “gave some shareholders time to reconsider and cancel their orders,” Brown said in an email. “All of this resulted in less demand and a dropping share price.”

NEW YORK, May 16 (Reuters) – When Jennifer Anderson’s family could no longer afford their mortgage and lost their home, she expected many years to pass before they would again become property owners.

But less than two years later, in March, they purchased a $297,000 house outside Phoenix, Arizona, after qualifying for a loan backed by the U.S. government.

They joined a small but growing number of Americans who are making a surprisingly quick return to homeownership after defaulting on their loans or being forced into short sales that cost their banks money.

“We didn’t really expect it,” said Anderson, 40. “We were resigned to the fact that we were going to be in a rental property for a while.”

Financial problems arose after she lost her job as a customer service representative for a health insurance company and her husband’s hours at an automaker were cut. To make matters worse, they used up her retirement savings trying to keep their home.

Data is not available, but interviews with more than 30 lenders, builders, Realtors and consumers suggest that a growing number of Americans are getting back into the housing market, even though they went through a foreclosure, bankruptcy or short sale in recent years.

“Most are not ashamed or bashful about what happened because so many people were forced into that reality in the last six years,” says Graham Epperson, vice president of sales in Arizona for the PulteGroup, a leading U.S. homebuilder.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sean Chua expected the hunt for his first job after college to be tough. After all, he watched his brother struggle to find a position when he graduated back in 2008. But his fears were unwarranted. The 21-year-old justice major at American University sent out only seven resumes before getting an offer earlier this month from IBM for an IT consulting job, making him a beneficiary of a turnaround in the labor market for U.S. graduates. “My mom’s first position was with IBM so she is particularly proud,” says Chua. Hiring is back in a big way on many college campuses, one of several signs a recovery in the U.S. jobs market is gaining traction. After four years during which many students graduated to find no job and had only their loans to show for their studies, most college campuses are teeming with companies eager to hire. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found 2012 hiring is expected to climb 10.2 percent, above a previous estimate of 9.5 percent.

Companies such as General Electric, Amazon, Apple and Barclays Global are looking for new staff, even if some firms remain below the pre-recession levels of new hiring. In another sign of the recovery, some first-time job seekers are receiving multiple offers.

At University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the career service office has seen up to now a 7.4 percent increase in the number of interviews of students by potential employers from last year and the number of companies seeking to recruit for full-time jobs is up 9.2 percent. Undergraduate business majors reporting full-time job offers is up about 10 percent.

Career experts at a dozen of U.S. schools said they have seen an increase of 15 to 30 percent in the number of companies attending campus career fairs. At University of Florida, the fall career fair garnered 15 percent more companies in attendance than in 2010. And 150 companies asked to conduct interviews versus about 100 in recent years, said Ja’Net Glover, associate director of employer relations at the school. The increase in demand was so significant that it was the first time in years the school had to use both the first and second floors of the school’s basketball facility for interviews.

“It’s kind of like a no-brainer,” says Kathy Sims. Director of Career Services at UCLA. “The economy is better and the college recruitment market is improving.”

While the U.S. jobless rate fell to 8.3 percent in February, unemployment among college graduates over the age of 25 stood at 4.2 percent. Historically, their jobless rate is half that of Americans with only a high school education. Over the recession, unemployment among graduates climbed as high as 5 percent, sparking protests over the rising tuition cost of some U.S. colleges. U.S. unemployment data for March, due for release on April 6, is expected to show a total of just over 200,000 jobs were created in the month, keeping the overall unemployment rate at 8.3 percent.

BACKLOG FROM PAST YEARS, INTERNS SOAR

(Refiling to fix headline)

By Jilian Mincer

NEW YORK, March 22(Reuters) – Rebecca Levey, co-president of the Parent Association at the William T. Sherman School in New York, is terrified about the school’s upcoming auction. A team of experienced volunteers is managing the March 24 event which will be held at a St. Paul’s the Apostle Church, and the stakes are high.

The parent association at this Manhattan public school hopes to raise about $300,000 from the event. That money helps pay for a librarian, kindergarten assistants and numerous enrichment programs – including chess and ballroom dancing – no longer funded by the district. Overall, the parent association budget is now $600,000, three times as much as it was when Levey’s 9-year-old twins started kindergarten at the Upper West Side school. “The school budget really just covers staff,” she says.

While the National Parent Teacher Association doesn’t keep track of how much money its 5 million members raise, interviews with dozens of schools and state PTAs confirm that as states have slashed school funding, parent contributions to public schools have soared. It’s no longer unusual for families at well-heeled schools to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year – even a million – for copy machines, paper, finger paints and other school supplies along with gym, art and music programs.

PTA funds also are used for much-needed building maintenance, classroom aides and essential staff like school nurses, but critics fear that these voluntary funds inadvertently let states off the hook and widen the gap between rich schools and poor, which can’t raise that kind of cash.

“It’s one thing to raise $300 for a teacher to buy school supplies, but it’s another thing to say $1 million,” says Arnold Fege, director of public engagement and advocacy at the Public Education Network in Washington, a network of community-based school reform organizations.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kathy Frederick always assumed she would retire from her hospital administration job when she was around 60.

But as that date neared, she realized she wasn’t ready. She was healthy, enjoyed the work and liked the paycheck. So she decided to stick around. Now 65, Frederick works two days a week on special projects for Scripps Health’s human resources department in San Diego.

Frederick isn’t unusual. While poor health and job cuts force many people to retire earlier than planned, a growing number of baby boomers want to work longer than their parents did.

Many are healthy and want to remain active. Others are trying to save more after the financial crisis slammed their investments and home values. More than half of those 50 and older surveyed in 2011 by AARP didn’t think they would have enough to live comfortably in retirement. As a result, 44.1 percent said they would like to work part time in retirement and a third planned to delay retirement altogether.

Ideally, workers should start thinking about that decision well before they’re actually eligible for retirement. Starting a couple of decades early might seem extreme, but it isn’t. Planning ahead gives you time to save more, switch careers, and make the best decisions about healthcare and Social Security. Here are a few ways to plan:

In Your 40s: This is a great time to prepare for an eventual career change, especially if you want to switch fields or turn a hobby into income. Try a writing class, work on a master’s degree in social work or computer programming or take advantage of tuition reimbursement programs offered by many large employers. Research that career that you never had and start laying the groundwork now.

Meanwhile, keep saving. Even if you’re spending more of your cash paying college tuition right now than saving for retirement, try to sock away as much as possible in your 401(k) plan. The sooner you start saving, the more time those assets have to grow — and the more financial freedom you’ll have to chase a second career that might be less lucrative than the one you are in now.

NEW YORK, March 7 (Reuters) – Kathy Frederick always assumed she would retire from her hospital administration job when she was around 60.

But as that date neared, she realized she wasn’t ready. She was healthy, enjoyed the work and liked the paycheck. So she decided to stick around. Now 65, Frederick works two days a week on special projects for Scripps Health’s human resources department in San Diego.

Frederick isn’t unusual. While poor health and job cuts force many people to retire earlier than planned, a growing number of baby boomers want to work longer than their parents did.

Many are healthy and want to remain active. Others are trying to save more after the financial crisis slammed their investments and home values. More than half of those 50 and older surveyed in 2011 by AARP didn’t think they would have enough to live comfortably in retirement. As a result, 44.1 percent said they would like to work part time in retirement and a third planned to delay retirement altogether.

Ideally, workers should start thinking about that decision well before they’re actually eligible for retirement. Starting a couple of decades early might seem extreme, but it isn’t. Planning ahead gives you time to save more, switch careers, and make the best decisions about healthcare and Social Security. Here are a few ways to plan:

In Your 40s: This is a great time to prepare for an eventual career change, especially if you want to switch fields or turn a hobby into income. Try a writing class, work on a master’s degree in social work or computer programming or take advantage of tuition reimbursement programs offered by many large employers. Research that career that you never had and start laying the groundwork now.

Meanwhile, keep saving. Even if you’re spending more of your cash paying college tuition right now than saving for retirement, try to sock away as much as possible in your 401(k) plan. The sooner you start saving, the more time those assets have to grow — and the more financial freedom you’ll have to chase a second career that might be less lucrative than the one you are in now.

NEW YORK, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Crystal Morello’s family pleaded for months with their lender for a cheaper mortgage on their family home in Belleville, Michigan. But time ran out last summer, and they left before they were evicted.

“The bank was reassuring us that it was helping us out,” says Morello, 26. “While we were getting a loan modification in one department, we were getting foreclosed in another.”

Nothing will get Morello back to the house she lived in since she was three, certainly not the small part her family might receive of a record $25 billion settlement announced Thursday between the government and five big U.S. banks accused of abusive mortgage practices.

Checks of up to $2,000 each are expected to reach 750,000 households who lost homes through the foreclosure process between 2008 and 2011.

As part of the deal, the banks also agreed to cut the amount of principal owed by homeowners and provide lower-interest rate loans to the tune of $17 billion for borrowers who are behind on their payments and who are at risk of foreclosure.

A further $3 billion is on tap to help homeowners who are current on their mortgages but are unable to refinance because they owe more than their homes are worth.

Critics of Thursday’s agreement, like Margaret Becker, director of the homeowner defense project at Staten Island Legal Services in New York, say the deal is “paltry”, at best.

By Jilian Mincer and Stephanie Simon

(Reuters) – Even before President Barack Obama announced plans last month to push colleges to improve affordability, a number of schools beat him to the punch by lowering tuition and helping students graduate in fewer semesters.

These schools — typically small private colleges like University of Charleston, Cabrini College and Midland University that lack the cachet of top-tier colleges and compete with less expensive state schools — are bucking the widespread trend of increasing costs. In the last year, a few have cut tuition by as much as 20 percent. Others promise that students will earn their degree in four years or the college will pick up the cost of additional coursework.

While there’s no hard data, dozens of schools already have cut costs or implemented graduation guarantees. More such initiatives are expected to be announced this spring.

Such programs have clearly intrigued students and parents, but skeptics fear they may have a negative impact on the quality of education.

Promising a cheaper, quicker education will “invite institutions to take shortcuts,” says Richard Arum, a sociology and education professor at New York University. The temptation, he said, would be to make courses less rigorous, hire fewer top-notch faculty and pack more students into each class. “If you don’t also focus on quality, you risk contributing to this downward spiral in the quality of undergraduate education,” Arum says.

Arum adds that the most elite private schools are not rolling back tuition, for fear of cheapening their brands. Even in this rough economy, plenty of students are willing to pay for the cachet of prestigious degrees. “The Harvard, the Yale, the New York University brands … they don’t need to do that, and they’re not doing that,” Arum says.

NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) – With worries about the debt crisis in Europe and high unemployment in the United States drawing the public’s attention, the sliding value of corporate pension funds has largely gone unnoticed.

The problem came into stark relief on Wednesday, when Boeing Co (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) joined a raft of U.S. companies that have announced hefty cash injections into underfunded pension plans, including General Electric Co (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research), DuPont (DD.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Alcoa Inc (AA.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Honeywell International Inc (HON.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Raytheon Co (RTN.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Boeing said it would add $1.5 billion in cash to its pension plan in 2012, nearly triple the amount it injected in 2011. The huge jump caused the aircraft maker’s full-year earnings forecast to miss Wall Street estimates. [ID:nL2E8COAWH]

Analysts say pension top-ups will take a big bite out of corporate earnings this year, due to more rigorous funding requirements and an erosion of investment returns caused by weak stock markets and low interest rates.

Of the 341 companies in the S&P 500 index .SPX with defined benefit pension plans, 97 percent are underfunded, according to a Credit Suisse analysis. Despite generous contributions last year, Credit Suisse estimated the plans’ liabilities at $458 billion at the end of 2011, an 86 percent increase from a year earlier.

“This level of underfunding is something, at least in the time that we’ve been following the issue, that we haven’t seen,” said Credit Suisse analyst David Zion, noting that the 2011 estimate is nearly three times larger than underfunding in 2002, after another U.S. recession.

Large pension contributions are an immediate hit on cash flow, diverting money from shareholder dividends, stock buybacks and capital investments. (Click here to see a graphic that compares a selection of pension obligations against cash positions: r.reuters.com/zyd36s)