Apartments are the one housing sector experiencing a strong recovery—and Forbesmagazine and real estate investment firm Marcus & Millichap recently rated the best big cities for renters.

According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, the home improvement business is poised for a decade of growth after being decimated by a double-digit decline in spending since 2007. Read how the FHA’s new PowerSaver loans will offer financing of up to $25,000 to homeowners to upgrade their residences—and how the FHA’s 203(k) rehabilitation mortgage will allow them to do even more.

As the number of U.S. factory jobs continues to shrink, cities increasingly find themselves with underused or abandoned industrial land. Where these sites border residential areas, the result is blight and increased crime. Read how the Oakland, California, housing authority took aging public housing on a blighted site and remade it to strengthen connections to nearby residences and community amenities.

As an increasing number of U.S. baby boomer households enter their empty-nester years and begin to think about retirement, developers should think about what impact this demographic shift will have on the demand for high-density housing. Read more to learn what the American Affluence Research Center survey of the richest 10 percent of Americans discovered about these homebuyers’ wishes and needs.

Advocates for property-assessed clean energy (PACE) financing have long argued that the public works–style assessments used for green home retrofits can actually bolster—not undermine—the home mortgage market. Now they have numbers showing a miniscule 0.1 percent default rate for the more than 2,500 homes in the three cities and one county with current or recently active PACE programs. Learn more.

As cities both large and small transition from manufacturing-based to service-oriented economies, municipal officials are forced to decide whether a site will be prepped for resale to another industrial user or if it should be remediated for residential development and commercial business. Read more to learn what a ULI panel told the city of Indianapolis to do with a well-sited vacant GM property.

It is the way that cities celebrate and showcase assets such as parks, culture and the arts, and safe neighborhoods that will determine the vibrancy of a community. Those communities that build partnerships to shape their response to these changes will be those that become successful 21st-century cities. Learn the three assumptions that successful cities will build on.

After two years of tough times, America’s second-home market is showing signs of life in select markets, thanks to increasing confidence in the economy, targeted marketing of properties to select segments, and a desire by many baby boomers to get on with their lives, say industry insiders. Read what advice they are giving to developers and entrepreneurs who want to enter this reviving market.

Melina Duggal, AICP, ULI member and senior principal of RCLCO, discusses what she sees as Gen Y’s impact on residential real estate going forward, based on a series of surveys conducted from 2004 to 2011 by NAHB, ULI and RCLCO.

Baby boomers’ constantly changing demands are affecting the formation, location, and types of living communities for seniors in the United States, and a number of trends are already identifiable. Read about the differing trends as well as current lending and players in senior housing.