With home prices and interest rates both on the rise, will more people look to renting as their only “affordable” option for housing? It looks like that might already be happening. Here's a deep dive into what's happening right now.

After experiencing a flat August, existing home sales retreated in September, falling to the lowest level in nearly three years. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said that the decline in regional sales can be attributed to rising interest rates and the continuing climb of home prices.

Nathan (Nat) Hardwick, the former chief executive officer of LandCastle Title and former managing partner of Morris Hardwick Schneider, was found guilty late last week of embezzling more than $25 million from his former companies, bringing an end to a massive scandal that destroyed a prominent real estate firm and left hundreds of people without a job.

Zillow announced that one of its longtime team members, Chief Operating Officer Amy Bohutinsky, will be stepping down from her role at the end of the year and has been selected to join the company’s board of directors.

Nomura Holding America and several of its affiliates will pay $480 million in a settlement with the Department of Justice over the companies’ mortgage bond activities in the run-up to the financial crisis. The DOJ claimed that Nomura misled investors, which included university endowments, retirement funds, federally insured financial institutions, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, about the quality of the underlying loans between 2006 and 2007.

Anna Maria Farias shares a special bond with Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. Farias also grew up in public housing. She, like Carson, fought hard to achieve a greatness unparalleled. Farias was the child of a single parent who struggled to make ends meet, and she witnessed first-hand the discrimination and harassment her mother faced daily.

RealPage will pay $3 million in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which accused the real estate tech and data company of providing landlords and property managers with faulty tenant screening results over a five-year period. According to the FTC, RealPage’s screening reports could have shown incorrect criminal records for a prospective tenant because of the company’s limited filtering system on its screenings.