Looking at the pictures, it’s easy to fall in love with a home with an architectural pedigree. Who doesn’t want to say their home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright or another famous architect?

However, owners of historic Wright homes warn, bragging rights aren’t all that come with the homes. Many are in need of significant and costly improvements.

At least 20 homes designed by Wright, whose career lasted from 1888 until his death in 1959 at age 91, are for sale around the country, at prices ranging from $690,000 to $5.6 million when we last checked a few months ago. According to The Wall Street Journal, about 270 Wright-designed homes are still lived in today.

More than 2 million Americans have sold their homes in the past five years through what is called a short sale: getting the bank to agree to take less than the house is worth.

Many have thought that by doing a short sale, in which they negotiate with the lender for an orderly exit, they would do less damage to their credit than if they waited for the bank to foreclose. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has said they’d be eligible for mortgages to buy again much more quickly if they did short sales rather than foreclosures.

The latest calculator to help you decide whether to buy or rent your dwelling lets you drill down to the ZIP code level.

Zillow’s new analysis of data from the first quarter of 2013 found that buying a home is a better financial move in 64% of U.S. metro areas if you plan to stay in the home at least three years.

But even within those metro areas, the decision varies by exactly where you want to live. For the first time, Zillow did the calculations down to the ZIP code. You can use the drop-down section below the map to break down the metro by city and then by neighborhood and also download more specific data.

The only house in Delaware designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is for sale by the daughter of the original owners.

The Dudley Spencer house was built in 1956, three years before Wright died. He created the plans from a model of the topography drawn by Spencer, an engineer for DuPont. He and his wife, Dorothy, lived in the home until their deaths.

Asking price for the 2,538-square-foot home in Wilmington, with three bedrooms and two baths, is $1.35 million.

Builders started construction on fewer single-family homes in April than they did in March, but the pace of construction is above last year’s pace, and the number of building permits rose.

Construction began on 2.1% fewer single-family homes in April than in March, but that was 20.8% above the rate of April 2012, according to monthly statistics from the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

With the way home prices are rising in some areas, you can't help wondering if we are in another housing bubble.

Not so far, says Jed Kolko, the chief economist of the real-estate portal Trulia. For there to be a bubble, home prices have to rise beyond the homes' fundamental values.

According to his analysis, that is not happening, at least in 91 of the largest 100 U.S. metros. Nationwide, homes are undervalued by about 7%, he calculates.

When I was a kid, my idea of a luxury bedroom was one that I did not have to share with my sisters, though I did do a little experimentation with changing the furniture placement and bedspreads. When I was a teenager, I even got my family's original black-and-white TV working again and dragged it into my room.

No one in my circle even dreamed of having his or her own DJ station, though some families did have "rumpus rooms" in the basement that were essentially hangouts for children and teens.

Even today, the $750,000 teen suite chronicled in a recent Wall Street Journal article is unusual. But, the WSJ says, more families are creating kid and teen hangouts to keep their progeny happy at home. Those custom kid spaces include everything from secret passageways to karaoke lounges to "offices" for doing homework.

Living in Florida, I've seen a little mold in my time. But I am thankful never to have experienced the ordeal detailed by one Washington, D.C.-area couple that resulted in a $478,500 cleanup.

That hefty bill includes the cost of renting during the nearly five years their townhouse was undergoing renovation, according to The Wall Street Journal. But by the time the work was over, the couple had spent essentially what they spent to buy the home, which was $479,000.

Not all mold problems are as dire, and you can clean up small mold infestations yourself. But the story is a reminder of how important it is to make sure there are no water leaks in your home.