| Washington, D.C. leads U.S. in attracting new residents and Turning foreclosures into rentals |
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According to a United Van Lines annual migration study, which took into account 146,000 interstate moves, nearly twice as many Americans moved to Washington, D.C. than moved out, making it the most migrated to destination in the nation for the fourth year in a row.Often, people go where the jobs are. As unemployment soared throughout most of the nation over the past four years, jobs were being created in or near D.C., thanks to one big employer: The government.The federal government hired about 150,000 workers, not including postal employees, since 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many of the new jobs were in D.C. and the surrounding areas in Northern Virginia and Maryland. And government salaries have been increasing, sometimes dramatically, drawing in many affluent professionals -- the kind likely to hire a large, full-service mover like United -- to the area. [Read the full article] They offer yields so lofty they're likely to fall. But mREITs may still have potential for investors.FORTUNE -- As bond, CD, and money market interest rates remain mired at rock-bottom levels, investors continue their quest for dividends. One category offers eye-popping yields: mortgage real estate investment trusts, or mREITs (which are required to pass most of their income to shareholders via dividends). Chimera Investment and American Capital Agency each yield more than 19%. And the largest mREIT, Annaly Capital Management -- which we've recommended before -- offers a 15% payout. Are these returns too good to be true?As their name implies, mREITs invest in mortgages rather than, say, office buildings, and they do so mostly with borrowed money. (Annaly, for example, has a debt-to-equity ratio of 6 to 1.) Like banks, mREITs make their money off the difference between their borrowing costs and the yield on their portfolio. [Read the full article] NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams plans to resign, the government-controlled mortgage giant said Tuesday. Williams, who took over as president and CEO of the troubled company in 2009, will continue as CEO until Fannie Mae's board names a successor. The firm did not provide a specific reason for Williams' departure; in a statement, Williams said only that he had decided that "the time is right to turn over the reins to a new leader." Williams will leave behind a firm still struggling to get its finances in order. In November, Fannie Mae (FNMA, Fortune 500) reported a net third-quarter loss of $5.1 billion. The loss forced the firm to ask for another $7.8 billion in funding from the Treasury Department, a request that took its bailout total to $112.6 billion. Federal regulators put Fannie Mae and fellow government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500) into conservatorship during the financial meltdown in September 2008. [Read the full article] 
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