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Retail Sales measures total receipts at stores that sell tangible “things” and — aside from weak demand for automobiles and automobile parts — Retail Sales displayed surprising strength in April.

So much strength, in fact, that many experts are changing their predictions about the U.S. economy’s fate.

Several months ago, most pundits declared that a [...]

According to the FBI 2007 Mortgage Fraud Report, more than 46,000 cases of suspected mortgage fraud were reported last year. This led to bank losses exceeding $813 million.

If you’re looking for reasons why mortgage underwriting is measurably more difficult in 2008 — add “mortgage fraud” to the list. Lenders now perform extra scrutiny [...]

Just like real estate markets differ from town to town, so does the Cost of Living.

Courtesy of CNNMoney, this helpful calculator measures the change in living expenses a person would face when moving between any two major cities in America.

The key expenses compared are:

Groceries
Housing
Utilities
Transportation
Healthcare

The comparison data is provided by C2ER which, on its own Web [...]

With little economic news to influence trading and despite a late-Friday afternoon spike, mortgage rates edged lower last week.

Two weeks ago, when it lowered the Fed Funds Rate by a quarter-percent, the Federal Reserve noted two things:

The economy was stabilizing
High energy costs threatened inflation

In the days that followed, though, the U.S. dollar strengthened and crude [...]

When the everyday “Cost of Living” increases, our dollars don’t go as far as they used to. Economists call this inflation.

One popular method of measuring inflation is to track prices for 84,000 individual items and lump them together into a “basket”. If the overall price is higher, then the economy is experiencing inflation.

If [...]

When real estate news is reported on television or in the papers, it’s usually told as a national story. Unfortunately, stories like these aren’t helpful for everyday Americans because real estate is not a national market.

Real estate is local.

The graph above was used by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in a speech to [...]

Four times annually, the Federal Reserve surveys 84 different banks about general banking conditions.

One of the survey questions asks about current mortgage lending standards and whether they are loosening or tightening.

The chart at right is from the April 2008 survey and it illustrates what we already know: It’s getting tougher and tougher to get approved [...]

The ubiquity of “free” credit reporting services like FreeCreditReport.com, TrueCredit.com, and AnnualCreditReport.com have helped breed a new generation of credit-aware Americans.

Because credit ratings have more importance to everyday life than in years past, this is a welcome development. For example:

Lenders use credit ratings to determine borrowing rates
Insurers use credit ratings to determine premiums
Employers use [...]

Mortgage rates ended higher last week on stronger-than-expected jobs data, strong consumer spending, and an appetite for riskier investments.

But, investors were most excited about the Federal Reserve’s hint that its rate-cutting cycle may be over.

The week was quiet until Wednesday when the Federal Reserve voted to lower the Fed Funds Rate by a quarter-percent. [...]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy shed 20,000 jobs in April 2008. The labor force now counts at 146 million people as employed.

Normally, a loss of jobs would foretell economic weakness and would be a good thing for mortgage rate shoppers. Today, though, traders had been expecting a larger [...]