Foreclosure starts increased nationwide for the third consecutive month but are down 20 percent from last year, according to Black Knight Financial Services "First Look" at mortgage data for July 2014 released on August 26. Overall inventory fell by 1.65 percent from June down to 935,000 in July. The overall inventory is down 34 percent from July 2013 and has hit its lowest level since March 2008.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and New York-based investment banking firm Goldman Sachs have settled a lawsuit alleging that Goldman Sachs sold faulty residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) to GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for which FHFA is conservator.

Mortgage note holders in North Carolina can no longer voluntarily dismiss more than one non-judicial foreclosure without being banned from filing additional non-judicial foreclosures, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled earlier this week.

A settlement has been reached in a housing discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the Louisiana State Bond Commission, the department announced recently.

Foreclosure sales are way down nationwide for the second quarter of 2014 with close to 115,000 reported, according to HOPE NOW's Q2 2014 data released earlier in the week. It was the lowest number of foreclosure sales reported for any quarter since HOPE NOW began tracking foreclosure data in 2007.

Nationwide sales of flipped homes dropped both quarter-over-quarter and year-over year in the second quarter of 2014, according to the Q2 2014 U.S. Home Flipping Report released by RealtyTrac on August 22.

The central figure at one of enduring images of the financial crisis is potentially facing the latest in a series of attempts to hold him responsible for some of the events leading to the economic downturn. U.S. attorneys in Los Angeles are preparing a civil lawsuit against former Countrywide Financial CEO and co-founder Angelo Mozilo

Obama administration officials praised Thursday's $16.65 billion settlement between Bank of America and the U.S. Department of Justice, $7 billion of which will go to provide consumer relief to assist those distressed by the collapse of the housing market in 2008.

Approximately 421,000 homeowners used various non-foreclosure solutions from mortgage servicers in the second quarter of 2014, according to recently released Q2 2014 data from HOPE NOW, a private sector alliance between various players in the mortgage industry. The number of non-foreclosure solutions in Q2 was almost quadruple the number of foreclosure sales for the same period (115,000), according to HOPE NOW.

The total number of mortgage refinances in the U.S. experienced a slight increase in June as mortgage rates dropped from May, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) Second Quarter 2014 Refinance Report. HARP-refinanced homes made up only about 15.7 percent of total refinances in Q2.