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The number of residential mortgage borrowers in a negative equity position during January 2015 was reported at slightly more than four million, which is a decline of 29 percent from the same period in 2014, according to Black Knight's March 2015 Mortgage Monitor released Monday.

The Dodd-Frank Act Stress Tests (DFAST) – Severely Adverse Scenario report indicated that the two GSEs would need a second taxpayer bailout, this time of up to $157.3 billion, under hypothetical adverse economic conditions that included a rise in the nation's unemployment level up to 10 percent by the middle of 2016; a decline in real GDP as large as 4.5 percent by the end of 2015 before recovery begins in 2016; and long term interest rates drop significantly while short-term rates remain near zero.

Safeguard's major innovations recently include the industry's first Mobile Inspections Quality Control suite, designed to reduce risks, expedite results that are reported from the field, and improve the quality of information provided to Safeguard's clients.

In spite of the recent reports of slow economic growth in Q1, Fannie Mae has maintained its forecast for GDP growth of 2.8 percent this year and its position that the economy will "drag housing upward." Fannie Mae chief economist and SVP Doug Duncan pointed out that the actuals as far as housing – existing home sales, new home sales, and prices – were either at or very close to their predicted levels during Q1, and mortgage purchase applications have been way up for the last couple of months.

At the heart of the FDIC's claim is that the banks misled Alabama-based Colonial Bank, an FDIC-insured institution, as to the quality of $300 million worth of mortgage-backed securities they sold to Colonial in the run-up to the financial crisis. As a result of the soured securities, Colonial suffered huge losses and went into receivership in 2009. FDIC sued the banks three years later in 2012, claiming the banks violated the Securities Act of 1933.

Plain City, Ohio-based A2Z Field Services has announced the retirement of its president, Bill McMullen, and the promotion of longtime SVP Amie Sparks-Beebe to the position of president and CEO with the company.

Grassley was referring to the March 26 appointment of Edward Golding as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Housing to essentially fill the duties performed by the office FHA commissioner, and the February 27 appointment of Lourdes Castro Ramirez to the position of principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) at HUD.

Distressed home sales accounted for 13.5 percent of all home sales nationwide in February 2015, which represented a decline of 3 percentage points from February 2014, according to CoreLogic's February 2015 Distressed Sales data released Tuesday. February 2015's distressed sales ...

The portfolio's March expansion represented an increase of about $1.5 billion, up to $1.914 trillion. It was only the 14th time in the last 63 months that the portfolio has expanded dating back to January 2010, at the height of the foreclosure wave.

The thin shadow inventory compared with rising home values has caused the share of distressed home sales to drop to single digits. Since there will be fewer properties sold at deep discounts, this will cause home prices to strengthen, Yun said. "It also means that those practitioners who specialize in foreclosures or short-sales need to start thinking about a change in business models to normal home buyers and normal positive-equity home sellers," Yun wrote on the blog.