Daily Dose

Improvements in economic fundamentals, notably employment growth among millennials, will fuel significant increases in home sales and housing starts and a modest rise in home prices in 2015, according to CoreLogic's 2015 Housing Outlook released earlier this week. Sam Khater, deputy chief economist for CoreLogic, predicted an increase of 9 percent in home sales and a 14 percent spike in housing starts for the coming year in the report.

An online petition calling for the end of the Federal Housing Finance Agency's conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been posted to the White House's "We the People" Web page.

Just before Christmas, President Barack Obama signed into law H.B. 5771, known as the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014, which retroactively extended 55 tax provisions – including one that provides distressed homeowners relief on forgiven mortgage debt. The bill ...

November's mortgage default risk index was reported at 11.69 percent, its highest level in two years, according to a briefing released by the American Enterprise Institute's International Center on Housing Risk. The November default risk index crept upward by 0.4 percentage points from October, when it was reported at 11.29 percent.

The national MiMi value stands at 74.5, which is up 0.12 percent from September to October and up 0.42 percent over the past three months. Year-over-year, the national housing market has improved 4.48 percent. While still well short of the all-time MiMi high of 122.5, reached in June 2006, the national index is markedly better than it was in September 2011, when the housing market was at 60.3.

A new forecast of existing-home sales for the month of December has projected activity rising but still finishing the year on a low note after a weaker than expected November. In its latest Nowcast projections, online real estate auction company Auction.com calls for pre-owned home sales to fall between seasonally adjusted annual rates of 4.79 and 5.18 million for December, with a targeted number of 4.98 million.

According to BEA, the latest quarterly estimate includes improved contributions from consumer spending, which is now estimated to have increased 3.2 percent compared to Q2's 2.5 percent gain. Also improved in the third report was the contribution from nonresidential fixed investment, which increased 8.9 percent. Residential fixed investment—a measure of the housing market's direct contribution to economic activity—increased just 3.2 percent.

On Monday, the Atlanta-based firm—one of the biggest mortgage servicers in the nation and the largest subprime servicer—announced it had agreed to pay $150 million for homeowner relief over allegations it conducted improper foreclosure procedures, used outdated and conflicting systems in managing its portfolio, and was involved in transactions with related companies that constituted conflicts of interest.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released a statement warning organizations that label mortgage loans with "super-priority lien" status that such loans will not push loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the secondary position. The warning was aimed mainly at energy retrofit financing programs and homeowners associations that attach super-priority lien status to mortgages because of the risk they pose to taxpayers while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are under conservatorship.

Both foreclosure completions and foreclosure starts on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans continued their steady decline in the third quarter, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)'s Q3 Foreclosure Prevention Report released Monday. The GSEs completed 39,100 foreclosures in Q3, down 9 percent from the 43,000 that were completed in Q2, according to the report.