According to the bank’s quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the bank has agreed to pay $335 million to settle a federal lawsuit that claims the bank misled shareholders as to the quality of certain mortgage-backed securities sold to investors immediately following the crisis.

Despite substantial declines over the last three to four years, especially in the last year, the rate of foreclosure inventory—that is, the percentage of residential properties that were in some state of foreclosure—remains about two and a half times its “normal” or pre-recession level, according to Black Knight Financial Services’ September 2015 Mortgage Monitor released Monday.

The serious delinquency rate on single-family mortgage loans backed by Fannie Mae is still well below its pre-crisis levels after declining by three basis points in September down to 1.59 percent. The serious delinquency rate on Fannie Mae-backed single-family mortgage loans has declined every quarter since Q1 2010.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) sent a letter to President Obama, calling on the Administration to end the conservatorships and recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Counsel's Corner is an ongoing series in which DS News talks with default servicing attorneys around the country about the most pressing issues facing the default servicing and mortgage industries. This installment features Mike Flynn, partner in Goodwin Procter’s Financial Institutions Group.

A recent report found that nationwide, there are approximately 20,000 so-called zombie foreclosures, which are residential properties that have been vacated by the owner but the foreclosure process has not yet been completed. With the owners gone, these abandoned properties are typically not maintained by banks, which potentially breeds blight, attracts violent crime, and brings down values of surrounding properties.

October 2015 marks the two-year anniversary since the first SFR securitization, IH 2013-SFR1 (Invitation Homes), in October 2013. Since then, total issuance for 25 single-family securitizations in two years have amounted to $13.08 billion backed by loans on nearly 100,000 homes, according to Morningstar.

With that expansion of the total mortgage portfolio came a drop of four basis points in the serious delinquency rate for loans backed by Freddie Mac, down to 1.41 percent—a year-over-year decline of more than half a percentage point, from 1.96 percent in September 2014.

However, the decline in GDP growth coincides with a drop in a couple of key housing indicators for September. Thursday’s announcement of 1.5 GDP growth came the same day as the National Association of Realtors' pending home sales index for September, which was reported to be at its lowest level in eight months.

At the end of the third quarter of 2015, the bank’s LAS unit was handling about 107,000 delinquent loans, according to the bank’s Q3 earnings statement released earlier in October.