Albert Hakim's (alwayssold) Blog

Home sales are expected to remain soft in the near term after mortgage applications fell 7.9% in January and another 3.3% in February, Fannie Mae said in its March Economic Outlook report. The report also highlighted the pressure excessive housing inventory has placed on prices. "Sales of existin...

A double-dip in housing could arrive this year with national home prices only 1% away from a new "post-crash low," MacroMarkets said in its March 2011 Home Price Expectation Survey. MacroMarkets compiled the report by gathering the opinions of more than 100 economists, real estate experts and inv...

As regulators stiffen mortgage underwriting requirements, some homebuilders stand to lose more business than others. Federal regulators will release a proposal in April defining what mortgages securitizers and, by extension lenders, will be forced to maintain 5% risk retention for. Early indicati...

Distressed property sales made up a lower percentage of total home sales in February, as mortgage servicers continued to grapple with legal and regulatory issues surrounding the foreclosure process. Overall, investors stepped up their homebuying game last month even as distressed property sales f...

Foreclosure time lines and an abundance of distressed home sales are causing wide fluctuations in shadow inventory across the country. The National Association of Realtors released state-by-state data on shadow inventory Monday, calculating the data in relation to distressed property sales. On th...

When will the asset management companies let all these houses finally hit the market? We have been hearing for the past 3 years the next wave is coming? but when? With all the vacant houses out there and not being marketed yet does anyone know the truth? Lets get some insight and see what everyon...

Foreclosures are setting off fresh tremors across the country but not because of any surge in unpaid loans. An elaborate system designed to assure good title to your home and solid assets on lender books has been shaken by revelations of botched foreclosure affidavits. This is a problem because c...

Foreclosure filings - default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions - were reported on 930,437 properties in the third quarter, a nearly 4 percent increase from the previous quarter but a 1 percent decrease from the third quarter of 2009, according to the RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure ...

The number of U.S. homes repossessed by lenders last month fell by the sharpest margin this year, as several major lenders temporarily halted most or all of their foreclosures amid allegations thousands of foreclosures were handled improperly. Home repossessions dropped 9 percent from September t...

Voters are required to register to vote in the county in which they live, but for individuals in the middle of a messy foreclosure, residency is sometimes difficult to pin down as they bounce from rental to rental or crash with family or friends. Each state sets its own rules, but the bottom line...