Real estate and mortgage industry services provider Clayton Holdings has announced the acquisition of Salt Lake City, Utah-based Red Bell Real Estate and its sister company, Main Street Valuation.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing Corporation has announced that the firm's co-issue mortgage servicing rights (MSR) purchases grew year-over-year by 257 percent in 2014. The growth has continued into the first quarter of 2015 and management expects that growth to continue throughout the year.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a decision by an appeals court and granted a writ of certiorari to investors of ING Group, allowing them to continue with their class action suit against ING that accuses the Dutch bank of withholding information about the riskiness of its mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis.

In the third estimate for the nation's fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth recently released, housing retained a 15.25 percent share of the 2.2 percent GDP growth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

According to FHFA, nearly 1.1 million distressed homeowners have been offered a HAMP modification since April 2009, when Treasury and HUD started the program. Out of those, approximately 638,200 homeowners received permanent modifications. As of the end of the fourth quarter, about 7,700 homeowners were currently involved in a trial HAMP modification.

Residential mortgage servicing rights sales and valuation advisory services provider MountainView Servicing Group announced Monday that it is acting as adviser for the sale of a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage servicing rights (MSR) portfolio with an unpaid principal balance (UPB) of about $10 billion.

The percentage of seriously delinquent mortgage loans, which are those 60 days or more past due or held by borrowers in bankruptcy whose payments are 30 days or more past due, was 3.1 percent in Q4 – a decline of 0.9 percent from the previous quarter and 12.2 percent year-over-year, according to the OCC.

The loans were sold in three pools, and winning bidder for all three was GCAT Management Services 2015-13. The loans were an average of about three years delinquent, meaning it is likely that all the borrowers have been evaluated for or are in some stage of loss mitigation, or are in foreclosure.

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 industry. This installment features Jeff Weisserman, Managing Partner and General Counsel with Trott Law, P.C.

According to FHFA, nearly 41,000 out of those 65,900 foreclosure prevention actions (62 percent) completed in Q4 were permanent loan modifications; 33 percent of borrowers who received loan mods had their payments reduced by 30 percent or more, according to FHFA.