Another day, another drop in new home sales. Another week, another rise in delinquent mortgages. Wake up, American paupers: the American dream of home ownership is dumb.

Everyone loves a good roommate horror story. This one is a classic in the genre. What would you do if you got an email from your new roommate offering to cover some of your rent? Don't answer until you've read the whole email.

Homeowners' associations were supposedly created by Real Estate God to fundraise for and oversee neighborhood maintenance, and to help developers to efficiently manage and market their properties. But it often seems that their true purpose in life is to drive homeowners insane.

Bristol Palin's five-bedroom in Maricopa, Arizona—where she was supposed to live while attending Arizona State University, before she changed her mind and signed on to a Hollywood reality show—is now available as a rental. The price is $1400/month. Click on the image above to view full-size. [Realtor, photo of Bristol via Getty]

Are you one of the Americans fortunate enough to still own a home? Sucks for you. Housing prices are at a new god damn low, right now, in the middle of the big recovery! Who, exactly, are the winners here?

Thanks to the Great Recession's magical cleansing powers, all of the home ownership gains of the past decade's housing boom have already been erased. But there is good news! The affordability of homes has plummeted back down to pre-boom levels in the majority of markets that Moody's surveys. Finally, a home is back in your non-imaginary price range!

Studies and conventional wisdom tell us that the suburbs are the new slums. But that is not stopping developers from building thousands of brand new houses—with elevators!—among the empty shells of foreclosed suburban homes. And people are buying.

Today in Out-dated Laws That May Apply to You: The Times exposes the 1950s-era prohibition against more than three unrelated people living together in a single dwelling. It is still on the books! Are you breaking the law right now?

The NYC Housing Authority is spending $248 million to renovate two shitty Brooklyn housing projects, while "a developer recently spent...$152 million [building a] condominium tower nearby." Which is probably languishing unsold! Just give everyone a free condo, the end. [NYT.]

Grizzled CNN war correspondent Michael Ware just got done spending seven years in Iraq. Soon he'll go to rugged-est Afghanistan. But for now, he's living in... Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Quick, what's the joke?

OK, that's not what we're advocating here, or even talking about. What we mean to say is: Hey, look! Someone found the blueprints for the Real World's new Dupont-located fuckhut. The biggest news? There's no goddamned hot tub. Whither Chlamydia?

Since President Bush said he couldn't stay at the White House's secure guest residence per tradition, Barack Obama will this weekend move into a secure Washington DC hotel. The Secret Service seems nervous.

More details have emerged on how the White House is bravely defending the DC area from the freeloading Obama family and their rowdy entourage. No adults allowed, it's neocon party time!

Just in time for the collapse of America's housing market, a blog called Keepin' It Realtor has taken on the important job of chronicling the "best" of real estate ads—the ones consisting of desperate-looking realtors who plaster their own faces on billboards and bus stops and, apparently, write their own ad copy. How many ways are there to make awkward puns involving the word "Sold?" At least four, so far:

What are "co-housing enthusiasts," asks the Brooklyn Paper? They're "a group of Brooklynites who want to buy a nice building near Prospect Park and share common areas with like-minded friendly people." They are sad living alone in tiny apartments and want friends! A co-housed building is a cross between a "commune and a condo." One place starts at around $600,000 a unit. There are communal meals, but no free love. (Sure, that's what they say now; we'll check back in six months.) [Brooklyn Paper]

The United Way and the Community Service Society have just released a slew of demographic maps of New York City, which handily answer the question: Are The Poors in your hood? Pictured, the household income map (click to enlarge), which is perhaps most surprising for revealing that Williamsburg, despite its yuppie influx, is still broke, along with HOT HOT NEXT BIG THING neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, et al. After the jump, neighborhood-specific maps of the city showing unemployment rates, immigrant populations, and "disconnected youth" who aren't working, in school, or concerned about you very much.

Richard Martin, the crazy sign-posting super in Bay Ridge who enjoys insulting tenants and watching his little dog ride the mechanical pony, is back in his proper place: the newspaper. The Daily News, determined to win the Martin-related tabloid war, reports today that the crazy old coot has finally moved the garbage cans out of his lobby, where he had placed them to piss off his tenants. He clarifies that those tenants are still, however, "disgusting slobs." But one anonymous tenant has struck back by lighting one of Martin's crazy signs on fire "and scorching the wall behind it." War! Could this be the end for our hero's reign of textual terror? Heaven forbid. In remembrance, a photo of our all time favorite Richard Martin sign [via BeehiveHairdresser] after the jump. We call it "Irish Fucking Christmas."

The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing to offer adjustable-rate mortgages based on the bubble-inflated value of the homes of borrowers unable to repay them, leading to upwards of $1.3 trillion in potentially non-recoupable losses, according to an intelligence report distributed to law enforcement authorities across the country this morning. The alert said al Qaeda "hoped to disrupt the U.S. economy and has been planning the attack for the past five years."

Remember Angel Hess, the "dance photographer" who lives in a '50s bread truck parked in Williamsburg? Good news! Now you can be just like him! Hello Miami Craigslist! "$1000 Artist House Williamsburg Brooklyn" you say?

New York magazine polls "some of the brightest minds in real-estate economics" and gathers the predictions on our crazy local market from dire to sunny. It turns out their worst-case scenario is that by 2010 purchase prices for housing plummet frighteningly... to 2004 levels. Oh, how frightening! Panic! How utterly unimaginative. Couldn't they have worked global warming into this or something? Maybe little illos of million-dollar 320 square-foot studios with water pouring in the windows in the year 2020—and outside you can spy former brokers and publicists, clad only in dog fur, their botox long expired, wrestling each other in the dank rising waters for big steaming hanks of child-meat?