If your mortgage is with Bank of America and you’re having trouble making payments, the bank has set aside two days this week to meet with you in SeaTac.

A free “homeowner assistance event” begins Thursday and lasts through Saturday at the Doubletree by Hilton across the street from the airport, at 18740 International Blvd. The bank is trying to reach more than 5,000 customers within 100 miles of Seattle, it said in a news release.

“Customers who are currently struggling with their mortgage can sit down face-to-face with a Bank of America specialist and discuss their current situation and …

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A 22-unit apartment building in Tacoma’s West End is under new ownership.

Finisterre Apartments at 601 N. Jackson Ave. sold for $1.1 million according to Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services, the realtor for both the buyer and the seller in the transaction.

The masonry, four-story building was built in 1959. It is valued on Pierce County’s tax rolls at $1.25 million. The building contains 14 one-bedroom, 6 two-bedroom and 2 three-bedroom units.

The realtor identified the buyer only as a private investor.

If you’ve admired handsome, architect-designed homes from afar and yearned to see them up close, a two-weekend tour of homes beginning Saturday is your chance to fulfill that wish.

Top architects and their clients throughout the Puget Sound area are opening up their homes to public viewing. The tour is sponsored by the American Institute of Architects Seattle and the AIA Southwest Washington.

The Tour of Architects offers four unique tours on four different days, the organizations said. Those tours are grouped by region so that participants have an easy opportunity to view all of the homes if they desire. …

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Successful sales provided a glimmer of hope for the Pierce and Thurston county housing markets in February.

More homes sold in Pierce and Thurston counties last month than the same time a year ago, though sale prices continued their drop.

Closed sales rose 30 percent in Pierce and 2 percent in Thurston, according to data released Monday by the Northwest Multiple Listings Service, which represents 21 counties in Western and Central Washington.

But the median sale price of single-family homes and condos fell 16 percent in Pierce to $169,450. That’s about 40 percent off the peak of $285,000 in August …

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Plans for a $150 million mixed-use retail and office complex on the Commencement Bay waterfront took more specific shape today as a Texas-based cinema company announced plans for a nine-screen multiplex at the center of the development.

The new cinema will be the first new theater complex built in Tacoma in more than two decades. Meanwhile, the city has had several existing theaters close. One, the Lincoln Plaza, was converted with a fitness center. Another, the Tacoma Mall Twin, was demolished and replaced by a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. A third, the Central, was converted into a church.

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Downtown Tacoma’s Jackson Building has been reborn as Vue 25.

The apartment building at the corner of South 25th Street and Yakima Avenue, whose development stalled in 2010, could welcome residents as early at April.

In an interview Thursday with The News Tribune, one of the building’s new owners detailed the work done in the past several months to get the 163-unit complex ready for residents.

“The building has been done to the highest of standards,” said Bob Tanaka, one of the founders of Randolph Street Realty Capital. Randolph, in a joint venture with BNY Mellon Asset …

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A Gig Harbor residential builder that has specialized in high-end custom homes is broadening its market focus.

The Rush Companies home-building division, Rush Residential, has announced it will begin building less expensive homes in addition to its traditional projects which have sold for $600,000 and up.

“After months of studying local market activity and monitoring the economic recovery, we have made a strategic decision to expand the focus of Rush Residential to serve a wider range of communities, products and price points,” said company president Matt Smith.

Rush recently bought 82 lots in a Gig Harbor North community, Harbor Crossing. …

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CoreLogic, a California-based business analysis service, has released its December Home Price Index. The data show a drop in the price of homes across the country, in Washington and in the Tacoma area. in 2011

Where home prices nationwide were down 4.7 percent at the end of December compared to prices in December, 2010, home prices in the Tacoma area were down 10.2 percent.

November figures showed prices had fallen 10.9 percent in the Tacoma area, the company said in a release Thursday.

Statewide, prices were down 5.3 percent fir December – placing the state between Delaware and New Mexico. …

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