(RECAP: America’s housing market is heating up again, fortifying the finances of current homeowners and frustrating potential first-time buyers. After hitting bottom in 2012, home prices took off dramatically before leveling off a bit in mid-2014. In the last two months, though, they turned higher again. The amount of equity homeowners now have — the value outside their mortgage debt — has doubled in the last five years, according to CoreLogic. The latest read on September home prices showed a 6.3 percent annual gain, a touch larger than August and a clear sign that prices are heating up again after cooling through much of spring and summer.)

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(RECAP: The quickening pace of home sales over the past year included a small rebound from two key segments of buyers who have been missing in action in recent years: first-time buyers and single women. This is according to the National Association of Realtors®’ annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, which also found that for-sale-by-owner transactions remained at an all-time low of 8 percent for the second straight year. Nearly 90 percent of all respondents worked with a real estate agent to buy or sell a home. The 2016 edition of Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers continues the longest-running series of national housing data evaluating the demographics, preferences, motivations, plans and experiences of recent home buyers and sellers; the survey dates back to 1981.)

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(RECAP: The Federal Reserve is not expected to leave anyone guessing. The central bank will use its two-day meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to place the market on notice that it intends to raise interest rates — in December. Economists expect the Fed to borrow a page from last year’s playbook to tee up a rate hike. Last October, the Fed policy statement said: “In determining whether it will be appropriate to raise the target range at its next meeting, the Committee will assess progress—both realized and expected—toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation.” Fed watchers saw the sentence as a clear hint of a go. And, in fact, the central bank followed through six weeks later with the first interest-rate hike in nearly a decade. “I reckon that [sentence] pops up again,” said Tom Simons, a senior economist at Jefferies.)

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