Daily Dose

Aside from the event scheduled for Chicago on May 27, HOPE NOW has announced borrower outreach events for St. Louis (June 13) and Cleveland (July 11) as part of an effort to focus on the Midwest. HOPE NOW said it plans to host events later in the year in Ft. Lauderdale, Hartford, Memphis, and Los Angeles.

In his commentary, Kan mentions that refinances are expected to be $551 billion in 2015, compared to a previously estimated $510 billion. MBA now estimates a total of $1.28 trillion in mortgage originations for 2015, compared to $1.12 trillion in 2014.

According to CoreLogic, San Jose, California, was the metro area with the second-highest year-over-year home sales growth with 14 percent. San Jose was one of only two of the top 10 markets for highest year-over-year new home sales growth; the other was Portland, Oregon, which was eighth. Atlanta, Georgia, ranked third at 10 percent.

“The CFPB continues to issue new regulations designed for massive, ‘systemic-risk’ financial institutions without considering how those same rules harm small businesses, community banks, and credit unions,” Pittenger said last month after H.R. 1195 passed in the House.

In CoreLogic's May 2015 MarketPulse released earlier this week, Boesel examined the question of whether or not REO share was headed back toward "a more normal level." Its most recently measured rate of 10 percent is far below the share at the worst of the crisis, which was 28 percent. In some metros, the REO share got as high as 70 percent at the worst of the crisis.

The market share for built-for-rent homes increased following the financial crisis of 2008, despite a share higher than the historical average in Q1, the total numbers overall are low. This particular measure includes only single-family homes that are built and rented out; it does not include homes that are sold to another party to rent.

Yesterday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that existing-home sales were at 5.04 million units, a 3.3 percent decrease from March, though up 6.1 percent from a year ago. Both, Auction.com and Consensus estimates were off for April because they predicted a stronger performance based on data released in March.

One provision of the bill prohibits increases in guarantee fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to offset losses or reductions in revenue, or for any other purpose besides business functions for the GSEs or housing finance reform. The bill also prohibits the sale of Treasury-owned senior preferred shares in the GSEs without approval from Congress.

Meanwhile, foreclosure inventory – the total number of mortgage loans in some state of foreclosure – continued its decline toward pre-crisis levels in April by falling 25.5 percent year-over-year down to 1.51 percent, about 764,000 properties. It is the lowest level for foreclosure inventory since January 2008 right at the beginning of the recessi

In its annual report released earlier this week, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) recommended that the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) continue to encourage Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to spread mortgage credit risk across the private market.