Daily Dose

The first mortgage default rate for August was 0.84 percent, up four basis points from July. This default rate fell to a historic low of 0.74 percent in May, then jumped by six basis points in June and held steady in July.

The national aggregate value of negative equity at the end of Q2 was approximately $309.5 billion, which was a decline from $338 billion at the end of Q1 and from $350 billion year-over-year (11.6 percent), according to CoreLogic.

According to the CME Group's FedWatch Tool, which measures the market's expectations of Fed target rates on a daily basis, there is a 74.7 percent chance of the Fed raising rates by 0.25 percent this week. On the other hand, the FedWatch data found that there is a 25.3 percent chance of the Fed raising rates by 0.50 percent.

This year's conference will include a keynote address from former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, a performance from country music star Wynonna Judd, an appearance from Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, seven Five Star Labs (including the inaugural Single-Family Rental Lab) presented by experts in the real estate and mortgage industries from all over the country, and endless networking opportunities.

The mortgage industry has recognized the growing popularity of the single-family rental market. This week at the 2015 Five Star Conference and Expo in Dallas will include the inaugural Single-Family Rental Lab, and Five Star will host the inaugural Single-Family Rental Summit in Las Vegas from October 11 to 13.

REO sales are down by 80 percent from their peak six years ago, but there are still plenty of affordable buying opportunities for homebuyers, according to a commentary by Chris Bowden, Freddie Mac's SVP of HomeSteps, the GSE's real estate sales unit.

One of the key rating drivers was Ocwen’s commitment to alleviate governance and operational control weaknesses within the company, which include changes to its “three lines of defense” approach to risk management, expansion of regulatory compliance and compliance testing departments.

Freddie Mac announced its intention on Monday to sell its first actual loss offering of loans with high loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, further expanding the GSE's Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR) debt notes program.

The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund of the U.S. Department of Treasury announced Friday the awarding of $202 million in grants and loans to 195 CDFIs through the CDFI Program and the Native American CDFI Assistance (NACA) Program, capping the 20th anniversary of CDFI funding.

Daniel Carroll, an economist with the Cleveland Fed, and Eric Young, a professor at the University of Virginia, contend in their commentary titled "Zero Growth and Long Run Inequality" that "to the extent that different rates of trend growth are associated with changes in wealth inequality, lower growth tends to yield less inequality rather than more."