Daily Dose

According to the group conducting the confidence survey, January's increase—which lifted the index to its highest level since 2004—was driven by an improvement in personal finances, with more consumers reporting increases in household income than any time in the past decade. They're also more optimistic about the labor outlook as job growth continues on a steady track.

The share of all-cash home sales continued its streak of annual declines in October but remained elevated compared to pre-crisis levels, according to data released Wednesday. In a post on the company's blog site, CoreLogic estimated that cash transactions accounted for 35.5 percent of total home sales in October 2014, down from 38.7 percent the year prior.

While housing recovery has generally been uneven for the last few years, the housing market experienced substantial growth in the fourth quarter of 2014 for all five indicators of Trulia's Q4 2014 Housing Barometer, which was released on Thursday. Three of the five indicators – existing home sales, excluding distressed sales; home price level; and delinquency plus foreclosure rate – are all more than three-quarters of the way "back to normal" as of the end of 2014, according to the barometer.

While foreclosure activity in Florida has been generally declining for the last year, the Sunshine State has still not completely recovered from being one of the states hit hardest by the financial crisis and foreclosure wave, which peaked in 2010.

Three government agencies – the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) – have announced additional outreach meetings to discuss their collective effort to reduce regulatory burden placed on them by the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act of 1996 (EGRPRA).

Settlements with the federal government for mortgage servicing misconduct led to sharp year-over-year declines for Citigroup and Bank of America in both fourth quarter and full-year net incomes in 2014, according to Q4 2014 and year-end earnings statements for both banks released on Thursday.

With the Republican majority now in place, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to pass a bill that eased some portions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, according to multiple media reports.

Among the goals in that category are instructions for the GSEs to finalize their rep and warranty frameworks (a process started late last year), encourage more participation from smaller lenders, and continue watching for other hurdles to credit access.

While lower prices are bound to keep Americans happy at the gas pump, they could potentially be a problem for housing in oil-dependent states, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. If the current decline impacts the local labor market (as the Dallas Fed indicated Wednesday in its own Beige Book), it could be a weight on their housing health in the next few years.

Two of the nation's largest mortgage lenders, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, reported year-over-year increases in their net incomes for 2014, according to the banks' respective earnings statements released on Wednesday. JPMorgan Chase reported a record net income of $21.8 billion for the full year of 2014, up from 2013's net income of $17.9 billion. The firm's earnings per share for 2014 was $5.29, which was also a record (for 2013, earnings per share was $4.35). Revenue experienced s slight decline, however, from $99.8 billion in 2013 down to $97.9 billion in 2014.