Lender's chief can't sell home

Barbara Desoer, who runs the largest US housing lender, can speak from experience about tumbling property prices: She couldn't sell her own home.

Desoer, 56, put her 4,500-square-foot house in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the market on Aug 1 for $1.675 million. She had just been named head of Bank of America Corp's real-estate unit, Countrywide Financial Corp, in Calabasas, California.

The home, which she and her husband bought in 2000 for $1.15 million, sold in December for a price that wasn't made public. The buyer: Bank of America, according to a proxy the lender filed March 18. Now the house is for sale again, at $1.295 million, $380,000 less than the original asking price, according to listing agent Allen Tate Realtors.