Daily Dose

It has enabled the industry to evolve its loss mitigation norms by helping to define a process that uses income to drive to a specific debt-to-income level, and it is likely that modifications beyond HAMP will continue to occur on this basis.

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 Angela Kleine, a partner in the San Francisco office of Morrison Foerster.

According to Treasury's Making Home Affordable Program Performance Report for Q1 2015, approximately 2.3 million homeowners had started HAMP trial modifications in the six-year existence of the program.

The foreclosure outflow was steady even with the lower year-over-year decline in foreclosure inventory; Black Knight found that 23 percent of all active foreclosures entering 2015 either were liquidated or went to sale during the six-month period ending June 30, 2015.

In a recent audit of HUD's oversight of the Department's Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM, or reverse mortgage) program, HUD's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that HUD's policies did not always ensure that borrowers complied with residency requirements, according to a release from the HUD OIG.

Additionally, the index has increased year-over-year for 11 consecutive months and is the third highest reading of 2015, behind April (111.6) and May (112.3).

Q2's real GDP growth is consistent with the positive news for most housing metrics as of late. Existing home sales are at pre-recession levels, and in the July 2015 pending home sales report released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), pending home sales were up by 7.4 percent year-over-year. Affordability and tight inventory remain obstacles to home sales, however.

The Obama Administration's recent housing policies indicate that it is more serious about achieving equality in housing than any recent administration, and many of the key participants in the push for fair housing will be convening in Washington, D.C. next month to further discuss the issues.

While much of the overall economic news has been positive as of late, a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released Wednesday indicated that low- to moderate-income (LMI) households are still struggling in the areas of employment and household stability.

The serious delinquency rate on Freddie Mac-backed single-family residential mortgage loans fell by another 5 basis points from June to July, down to 1.48 percent and is now lower than the 1.52 percent serious delinquency rate reported for Freddie Mac-guaranteed loans in November 2008 at the start of the financial crisis.