(Reuters) - When Sean McGowan signed a contract to buy a New Jersey home in November, he didn't expect he'd still be living with his parents nearly a year later. The deal fell through after two appraisals came in tens of thousands of dollars below the contract price, part of a wider trend of differences over property valuations that is compounding the U.S. housing crisis. "It was very frustrating. We really wanted to move in," said McGowan, a 31-year-old real estate lawyer.

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(Reuters) - After being held up as a model of strength in a region saddled with debt and low growth, Germany suddenly finds itself in a perfect economic storm that could force it to rethink its approach to the crisis plaguing the wider euro zone. New business sentiment figures from the Munich-based Ifo institute confirmed on Wednesday what tepid second-quarter growth data suggested last week: Europe's largest economy is slowing, and slowing sharply.

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(Reuters) - Home mortgage applications for purchases fell to a nearly 15-year low last week as resurgent worries about the strength of the economy kept buyers at bay, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, fell 2.4 percent in the week ended August 19.

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(Reuters) - BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) (BLT.L) delivered a record second-half profit on Wednesday, driven by soaring prices for iron ore, allowing it to award a dividend hike on top of its hefty expansion plans. The world's biggest miner nevertheless joined it peers in sounding a warning over escalating costs and disappointed some investors by deciding against a share buyback after the result, which also produced Australia's largest ever corporate annual profit of $21.7 billion and $30.1 billion of operating cashflow.

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(Reuters) - Stocks rose on Tuesday after gauges of Chinese and euro zone economic activity came in less gloomy than feared, and investors shrugged of more signs of weakness in the U.S. housing sector. The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI gained 97.33 points, or 0.90 percent, to 10,951.98. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX gained 9.87 points, or 0.88 percent, to 1,133.69. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC gained 32.03 points, or 1.37 percent, to 2,377.41.

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(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp's (BAC.N) shares fell as much as 6.4 percent to their lowest level since March 2009 as investors worried about possible write-offs and capital raises. The cost of insuring the bank's debt against default spiked to record levels. Investors said there was little new information on Bank of America on Tuesday, but the downward momentum in the bank's shares has taken on a life of its own.

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(Reuters) - Factory output in the U.S. central Atlantic region contracted again this month and new home sales fell to a five-month low in July, adding to signs of a weak second-half economic expansion at best. The Richmond Federal Reserve Bank said on Tuesday its composite index of factory activity in its district fell to minus 10 as new orders and shipments weakened sharply after a minus 1 in reading in July.

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(Reuters) - The chief of Standard & Poor's will step down next month, to be replaced by a senior Citibank executive, in a move announced a few weeks after the credit rating agency downgraded U.S. government debt and sparked a row with Washington. S&P's parent, McGraw-Hill Companies Inc, said on Tuesday that Deven Sharma, who has served as S&P president since 2007, would step down on September 12, to be succeeded by Citibank chief operating officer Douglas Peterson.

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(Reuters) - Switzerland's biggest bank UBS AG (UBSN.VX) (UBS.N) is to axe 3,500 jobs to shave 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.5 billion) off annual costs as it joins rival investment banks in reversing the post-crisis hiring binge and preparing for a tough few years. UBS said almost half the cuts would be in investment banking. It had already said it would cut jobs when it posted weak second quarter profits last month as its underperforming fixed income business weighed.

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(Reuters) - Germany's top court will give its verdict early next month on whether the government broke the law with last year's bailouts of debt-stricken euro zone countries -- a ruling which could limit Berlin's room to manage the region's debt crisis. The Karlsruhe-based Federal Constitutional Court will announce its verdict on September 7 at 4 a.m. EDT, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The court is considering three lawsuits brought by six eurosceptic plaintiffs -- five academics and a lawmaker from the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats -- against German-backed international bailout schemes for Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

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