Government

In the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) Conservatorship Priorities for 2013, delivered in early March, Acting Director Edward DeMarco discussed his goal of creating a common securitization platform for the GSEs. As FHFA and the GSEs take the first steps toward developing this platform, Freddie Mac's SVP of conservatorship and corporate initiatives, Stephen Clinton, outlined some of the positive impacts the platform could have on the market.

Restrained by slow wage growth, personal income rose a disappointing $30.9 billion (0.2 percent) in March--half of what economists expected--as spending rose $21.0 billion or 0.2 percent, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, reported Monday. Personal income had improved $15.2 billion in February, largely on the strength of an $80 billion increase in dividend payments. Dividend payments in March increased by $4.5 billion over February.

A third round of 927,000 foreclosure review checks was sent out Friday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced. The most recent batch of checks is valued at $794 million. As of April 25, 1,150,328 recipients have cashed or deposited $1.1 billion in checks from the foreclosure settlement reached in January with federal regulators and 13 servicers. So far, more than 3.7 million checks worth $3.2 billion have been mailed off to eligible borrowers under the settlement.

The Idaho Supreme Court dismissed a plaintiff’s wrongful foreclosure complaint against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) and defendants, affirming a district court ruling. The plaintiff in Edwards v. MERS et. al brought action against the defendants to stop a non-judicial foreclosure and argued MERS, the named beneficiary, could not legally act as the beneficiary.

The nation's economy rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.5 percent in the first quarter, slightly slower than economists had expected but more than six times the growth rate in the fourth quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Friday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected gross domestic product (GDP) to grow at a 3.1 percent pace. Residential fixed investment added $11.8 billion to GDP, down from the $15.3 billion contribution in the fourth quarter, and spending on non-residential structures actually subtracted from GDP, albeit a scant $200 million.

The economic recovery, which began in 2009, has brought disproportionate gains to the wealthiest Americans, while the majority of households experienced a decline in worth, according to research released this week from the Pew Research Center. The top 7 percent of households--measured in terms of household wealth--experienced a 28 percent increase in net worth from 2009 to 2011, while the remaining 93 percent of American households experienced a 4 percent decline in worth, according to Pew.

A no-down payment loan program has quietly become the mortgage industry leader when it comes for foreclosure avoidance. For most of the last five years VA loans have maintained the lowest foreclosure rate of any major loan product, besting even prime loans. In the same span, the VA has helped nearly 300,000 military homeowners avoid foreclosure, mostly through supplemental servicing and encouraging lenders to explore viable alternatives.

CoreLogic, a leading residential property information, analytics, and services provider headquartered in California, announced its acquisition of Case-Shiller from Fiserv, Inc. The acquisition closed March 20.

According to Interthinx's yearly Mortgage Fraud Risk Report--based on analysis of loan applications processed throughout 2012 by Interthinx's FraudGUARD system--the 2012 Annual Mortgage Fraud Index was 150, a 3.4 percent rise from 2011's index reading of 145. While the East housed more risky states last year, the West was home to two of the riskiest--Nevada and Arizona, which ranked first and third in terms of risk, respectively.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance dropped for only the second time in the last six weeks, falling 16,000 to 339,000 for the week ending April 20, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The report offered final numbers for the week ending April 13, the same week used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for its monthly Employment Situation report to be released May 3.