Daily Dose

While job growth continues to push meaningful income growth, the outlook for housing market growth is also improving, the GSE says. Of those surveyed, the share of respondents who say home prices will go up in the next 12 months increased to 49 percent, while the share who say home prices will go down dropped to 6 percent.

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 Ron Deutsch of Maryland-based Cohn, Goldberg & Deutsch.

March's distressed sales share was the lowest percentage for any March since 2007. According to CoreLogic, distressed sales usually experience a month-over-month decline in March due to seasonality; this past March, the distressed sales share fell by 1.9 percentage points from February. According to CoreLogic, 8.4 of home sales were REO (real estate-owned) transactions in March 2015, while 3.7 percent were short sales, totaling 12.1 percent.

In Q1 2015, Black Knight found that about 15 percent of seriously delinquent mortgage loans participated in a home retention program each month, while nearly 20 percent of serious delinquent borrowers were actively in an active trial mod or repayment plan at the end of April. Home retention actions included permanent proprietary mods and permanent mods through the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced the launch of a new website, hudhousingcounselors.com, that is designed specifically for HUD-approved housing counseling agencies, according to an announcement on HUD's website.

In the NAHB's Eye on Housing blog, Crowe cited a number of positive housing statistics that indicate that April was a prosperous month for the industry in spite of the U.S. economy contracting at an annualized rate of minus 7 percent in Q1. The lack of economic growth in Q1 did nothing to damper economists' predictions about housing recovery for 2015, however, largely because of strong April numbers.

Ocwen Financial Corp. reacted to the recent developments in the last week that included a ratings upgrade from Moody's and being placed Standard & Poor's CreditWatch list for a downgrade, with a press release on Friday in which the company's president and CEO praised the company's progress and said he was "surprised" by S&P's move.

Revised, employment gains for March and April were a combined 32,000 more than previously reported (March's job gains were revised from 85,000 up to 119,000, and April's were revised down slightly from 223,000 to 221,000). With approximately 3.01 million jobs added in the last year and the job situation seemingly recovered from a disappointing March, the housing market may be reaping the benefits later in the year, according to analysts.

Cordray ruled that New Jersey-based mortgage lender PHH Corp. accepted kickbacks for illegally referring consumers to mortgage insurers. In addition to Cordray's ruling, a final order was issued that requires the lender to obey the law and to pay $109 million to the CFPB.

Over the past two years, the SFR mortgage-backed securities market for single family rentals has grown rapidly, the CoStar reported. Institutional owners have brought 18 of these transactions to a total market value of $9.8 billion.