When it comes to new homes, what will be hot in this year?
      Deborah Rosenstein, with Rosenstein Research Associates, keeps an eye on what's hot by talking to consumers, focus groups and forecasting organizations, and touring 500 to 600 model homes a year.
      One of the most obvious patterns of years past has been the move toward increasingly-larger homes, a trend that may be slowing. While "the market truly likes a big home," Rosenstein says there's a limit to how large they can be because lots are smaller and you just "can't get as much ground." The emphasis this year will be increasingly on quality, rather than quantity. In her words, buyers will be "getting well defined spaces, sort of jewel box spaces."
      Rosenstein says, "You're getting all the functions that you had in a much larger house, but the finishing package is

     It happened eleven times last year: The Federal Reserve reduced short-term interest rates in an effort to stimulate the economy.
      It's often thought that there's an immediate connection between short-term interest rate changes and fixed-rate mortgage interest levels. That's not the case, instead fixed-rate interest costs are largely related to long-term investment alternatives.
      The short-term Funds Rate and Discount Rate controlled by the Fed are designed, among other things, to stimulate the economy by making it less expensive to borrow money in the short term. If it costs less to borrow, then it's hoped that companies will use cheap money to expand, produce more, and hire additional workers. As a result, unemployment will fall, people will increase purchases, and investors will buy stock with an expectation of higher values. Of course this is all theory: Whether shares values will rise generally, or whether the value of a particular company will rise or fall in the future, cannot be known in advance.
      If investors are moving money into the stock markets, they're probably taking that same money from some other