* U.S. GDP grew just below 1% (annualized) in 1Q 2008, with final sales to domestic purchasers falling (slightly) for the first time since 1991. Weak consumer spending, a pronounced shift to decline in business investment, continued rapid declines in residential investment and even a slowing in state and local government purchases were notable contributors. Businesses continued to liquidate inventories. Still soft (less than 1%) domestic final sales growth should continue this quarter, while market looks for continued improvement in net exports to push GDP growth to near 1% once again.

While the housing collapse continues, with residential construction likely to decline for the remainder of 2008, there are reasons for optimism that the pace should soon begin to subside. Since peaking in 2Q 2006, the Case-Shiller national housing price index has fallen 16.2%. With reference to the long-run relationship between rents and home prices, roughly an additional 15% decline in home prices should be expected.

Although real estate mortgages are funded through banks, mortgage bankers, and their financial lending institutions, in most cases the money actually comes from two giant secondary lenders: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These are quasi-public organizations that create a secondary market for residential real estate loans. This means that when a bank creates a mortgage, it can then “sell” that mortgage to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and recoup most of its investment, which it can then loan out again. It continues to service the loan (collect the payments) for a fee, although it can also sell this servicing to some other similar organization if it chooses. (This is why, if you’ve ever had one of these mortgages, you find that the lender to whom you make payments is constantly changing.)

Bay Area home sales climbed nearly 30 percent from March to April, the first monthly gain in half a year as financing became easier to secure and shoppers took advantage of bargains, according to a research firm.From a year ago, however, sales were still down 15.3 percent, according to DataQuick Information Systems of La Jolla (La Jolla County).

There were month-over-month sales increases in February, March, May and October of last year, none of which presaged an overall strengthening of the market.

There seems to be no end to the number of foreclosure opportunities for investors these days. In keeping with this trend, a number of Web sites have been created to serve the foreclosure investor. To that end, we’ve listed 100 sites below, from tutorials to databases to articles and blogs. Although some sites are more useful than others, we’ve tried to avoid sites that offer no value to the investor whatsoever. These include databases listings without a clue as to who offers these databases and Web sites that offer advice without credentials. With that said, we may have missed a site or two that may truly be useful. If you know of a site that provides value to the foreclosure investor, let us know through your comments.