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The ARP 2014-SRF1 transaction (American Residential Properties) once again had the highest delinquency rate out of the 21 transactions at 2.2 percent as of the end of August, holding steady from July after taking a big drop from 3.0 percent in June.

The Dodd-Frank Act still allows the Fed some of the same emergency lending programs used in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis despite the legislation's stated purpose of ending such bailouts, according to a study by Norbert J. Michel, Research Fellow in Financial Regulations, the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity at the Heritage Foundation.

Single-family mortgage loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac perform better after modification when they are modified through the government's Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP), according to the FHFA's Foreclosure Prevention Report for Q2 2015 released this week.

The latest ACIS transaction transfers much of the remaining credit risk associated with the first actual loss STACR offering from April 2015 (STACR Series 2015 DNA1), and it transfers combined maximum limit of up to about $132.5 million in losses on single-family mortgage loans acquired by Freddie Mac in Q4 2012.

Three federal courts have ruled in favor of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS), dismissing borrowers' suits to quiet title and affirming MERS' authority to assign the mortgage lien, according to an announcement from MERSCORP Holdings.

According to the NAR's Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), contract signings decreased 1.4 percent to 109.4 in August, down from 110.9 in July. However, the index is still 6.1 percent higher that 103.1 recorded in August 2014.

Driven by a a trend of increasing household equity, the total value of the residential housing market nationwide rose to $22.7 trillion as of the end of Q2 2015, according to the Urban Institute's Housing Finance at a Glance report for September 2015 released Friday.

JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bancorp all experienced yet another decrease in their third-party mortgage servicing portfolios in the second quarter of 2015.

In the second estimate for Q2 released in August, real GDP grew at an annual rate of 3.7 percent; in the "advance estimate" released at the end of July, it grew at a rate of 2.3 percent. In the third and final estimate for Q1, GDP growth was a mere 0.6 percent, way below expectations.

The serious delinquency rate on Freddie Mac-backed loans is now seven basis points lower than it was in November 2008 at the start of the financial crisis (1.52 percent) and nearly 2 percentage points lower than the national serious delinquency rate reported by CoreLogic for July 2015 (3.4 percent).