Albert Hakim's (alwayssold) Blog

Initial jobless claims decreased another 6.6% last week on top of a big decline the prior week, after reaching the highest level since August during the first week of May. The Labor Department said the seasonally adjusted figure of actual initial claims for the week ended May 14 fell by 29,000 to...

Home sales in April were unchanged from March as investors remained in the game with the expectation that prices bottomed out, according to the latest RE/MAX National Housing Report. Last month, investors made up 25% of the market, sparking speculation buyers anticipate higher interest rates and ...

While default rates are down mostly so far this year, borrowers with second mortgages went against trend with their default rate rising in April for the first time in five months, according to data from Standard & Poor's and Experian. The firms produce the S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Ind...

Recent investigations and regulatory crackdowns on the mortgage servicing industry may only delay income at Lender Processing Services (LPS: 28.52 -0.24%) in the near-term, the company's CEO Jeff Carbiener said Friday. The default servicing industry has been at the center of investigations from f...

More and more of the nation's older homebuyers are using savings to put money down on new homes. In 2007, 92% of Americans 55 or older who bought a home used money from a the sale of a previous home for the down payment on a new mortgage. In 2009, however, only 55% were able to take the same rout...

The mortgage finance industry is in a state of flux. One constant is the government-sponsored enterprises of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently finance the vast majority of the nation's home purchases. However, the GSEs will be shrinking in the future. And a panel at the Mortgage Bankers Associ...

Lender Processing Services (LPS: 28.555 -0.12%) said 500,000 ailing mortgage borrowers either came current on their payments or lost their home to foreclosure in the first quarter, according to a recent mortgage monitor from the Florida-based data provider. Those mortgages are supported by "seaso...

Roughly $146 billion in bank bailouts are not yet repaid to the Treasury Department as of the end of March, and the return on those investments remains "unknowable," according to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. More than 550 banks have not repaid their bailout...

A federal court in South Florida charged nine people in three separate indictments for their alleged roles in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme. The scheme involves inflated mortgages tied to high-end properties sold in the Versailles development in Wellington, Fla. The U.S. attorney's ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Thursday to align their guidelines for servicing delinquent mortgages. Previously, the government-sponsored enterprises maintained different requirements for how their mortgage servicers would treat these loans. But the FHFA f...