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As the housing market heals, foreclosure inventory is depleting quickly, CoreLogic reported Thursday. In July, about 949,000 homes were in some stage of foreclosure, down 32 percent from 1.4 million a year ago. CoreLogic also reported steep declines in completed foreclosures and serious delinquencies. According to the data provider's estimate, about 49,000 properties were lost to foreclosure in July, down 25 percent from 65,000 in July 2012. At 5.4 percent, the serious delinquency rate decreased to the lowest level since December 2008, according to CoreLogic.

Shrugging off cutbacks in government spending, the nation’s economy grew in the second quarter at a faster pace than originally reported, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. Second quarter growth was calculated at a seasonally adjusted annual 2.5 percent rate, a sharp increase from the 1.7 percent initially reported for gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of the nation's economy, a month ago. The stronger growth suggests a recovery on track, though the growth rate is shy of the 3 percent trend rate, a threshold generally considered necessary to expand payrolls.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending August 24 dipped 6,000 to 331,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected the number of claims to fall to 330,000 from the 336,000 originally reported for the week ended August 17. The number of filings for that week was bumped up to 337,000.

While higher mortgage rates have been blamed for the slowdown in pending home sales, they may be contributing to an increase in cash purchases, RealtyTrac suggested in a recent report. In July, about 40 percent of residential property sales were all-cash transactions. The share presents an increase from 35 percent in June and 31 percent compared to July 2012. Short sales also accounted for a bigger share of sales in July, increasing to 14 percent, up from 13 percent in the prior month and 9 percent from a year ago.

The first two phases of the recovery began in 2009 and 2012, respectively, according to Trulia's monthly Housing Barometer. The milestone marking the first phase was when sales and construction first started to pick up. The second phase began when home prices reached bottom and began to increase. The third phase began this spring after housing inventory bottomed out and both inventory and mortgage rates began to climb, according to Trulia. What we're waiting on now, according to Trulia, is the fourth phase, in which ""young adults finally start moving out of their parents' homes.""

Six federal agencies jointly released their proposed QRM rule that would require lenders to retain risk when selling mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The new proposal was created in consideration of the industry's response to the original proposal issued in 2011. That proposal required lenders to keep a stake in the loans they sold in which borrowers were spending more than 36 percent of their income on payments and in loans with down payments of less than 20 percent. Under the new proposal, the 36 percent income threshold has been raised to 43 percent, and the revised rule also eliminates the down payment requirement.

The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) slipped 1.3 percent in July, the steepest decline this year, to 109.5, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday. Economists had expected the index for July would drop to 109.8, which would have been a 1.0 percent decline from June's 110.9. The June index was unchanged. NAR economist Lawrence Yun cited higher prices as affecting new contracts. ""Higher mortgage interest rates and rising home prices are impacting monthly contract activity in the high-cost regions of the Northeast and the West,"" Yun offered as an explanation for the drop in the PHSI.

According to Mortgage Daily's Mortgage Employment Index, the number of mortgage layoffs surpassed the number of newly added jobs by nearly 3,000 in the second quarter. From April to June of this year, the mortgage industry experienced 9,950 job losses, while newly filled positions totaled 6,969, leading to a net 2,981 layoffs. The second quarter statistics are a significant letdown when compared to the first quarter of this year, when mortgage companies added a net 5,129 jobs, with layoffs at just 2,930, Mortgage Daily reported.

With declining refinance volumes, the industry can't seem to support the number of loan officers it has had on staff of late. Wells Fargo, for example, is reportedly cutting 2,300 production jobs. However, this glum news may have a silver lining, according to at least one industry executive. ""There's a huge opportunity for former loan originators taking their existing skill set and industry knowledge and applying them in specialty servicing,"" Patrick Norton, SVP of Fay Servicing, told DS News. Unlike refinancing, which experienced a recent boom and is now on the decline, Norton says specialty servicing will not likely see a decline any time soon.

According to Redfin, ""this July saw a healthy jump in homes sold throughout most of the 19 markets covered in this report,"" improving 3 percent month-over-month and 17.6 percent year-over-year from a rather disappointing July 2012. In fact, Redfin found July 2013 experienced the highest number of homes sold in the past four years, with the 19 markets together seeing about 94,000 sales. While sales numbers picked up, Redfin believes the gains won't last. At the same time, reports on home price growth and inventory were less positive in July.