(RECAP: Fannie Mae and its cousin, Freddie Mac, are once again headed for distress. In fact, there’s nearly no way around it. On Jan. 1, 2018, the two government-sponsored enterprises will officially run out of capital under the current terms of their bailout. After that, any losses would be shouldered by taxpayers. Granted, few people are predicting a disaster like the one in 2008, when the GSEs had to be thrown a $187.5 billion federal lifeline. But eight years later, people still don’t agree on what to do with these wards of the state. In Washington and on Wall Street, the fight over Fannie and Freddie drags on. The stakes are high. Earlier this month, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the GSEs, said Fannie and Freddie might need a $126 billion rescue if the economy were to stumble hard again.)

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(RECAP: A choice on a much-scrutinized Midlothian mixed-use development won’t be made for at least another two months – nearly a year and a half since the project was first proposed. Blackwood Development’s proposed Winterfield Crossing project – a mix of 250 age-restricted apartments and 100,000 square feet of commercial space that would fill 25 acres along Midlothian Turnpike – was deferred Tuesday night by the Chesterfield County Plotting Commission, which will take the case up at its Oct. 18 meeting. The deferral is the latest of many for the $40 million project, which was first submitted to the county in May 2015. An earlier version of the project received the commission’s endorsement last November, but county supervisors sent the case back to the commission in January, citing “a significant amount of opposition and misinformation about the case in the community.”)

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(RECAP: The housing crunch, which has been driving up prices for the few houses on the market and leaving a whole lot of wannabe homeowners outbid and frustrated, is expected to get even worse this year. That’s according to the latest report on new construction in the U.S. Builders applied for fewer permits to construct new homes in July—which is a pretty excellent indication that fewer residences will go up in the coming months. The 95,800 permits represented a 7.2% drop from a year ago and was down 16.3% from June, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s monthly new residential construction report. It isn’t just single-family homes that aren’t going up. Despite the dearth of affordable rentals on the market, the number of permits to place up multi-family dwellings (i.e. rentals, condos and co-ops), tumbled 6.9% from last year and 12.7% from June, according to the report.)

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