Secondary Market

Home prices will increase over the next three years as the economy expands and servicers work through their distressed inventories, according to a report from Moody's Analytics. Home prices will rise about 4.2 percent between the fourth quarter of last year and the fourth quarter of 2015, Moody's projected. The firm also anticipates foreclosures will have less of a hold on home prices in years to come as ""fundamentals that normally drive house prices"" come back into play, including ""job growth, demographics, affordability, and supply conditions.""

CoreLogic, a leading residential property information, analytics, and services provider headquartered in California, announced its acquisition of Case-Shiller from Fiserv, Inc. The acquisition closed March 20.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance dropped for only the second time in the last six weeks, falling 16,000 to 339,000 for the week ending April 20, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The report offered final numbers for the week ending April 13, the same week used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for its monthly Employment Situation report to be released May 3.

The broadening housing recovery has firmed up home prices around the country, with the potential to restore many underwater mortgages to a position of positive equity, according to Fannie Mae's economic and strategic research group. Citing data from CoreLogic, the GSE notes that 1.7 million properties moved from negative to positive equity last year. Provided the home price gains seen so far this year continue, Fannie's economic analysts anticipate another 1.8 million properties will rise out of their underwater positions by the end of 2013.

Starting July 1, large numbers of non-paying borrowers will have the opportunity to modify existing mortgages through a more streamlined process. This sounds like a good way to reduce foreclosures and prop up home prices, but as we will shortly see the proposed program is oddly risky and likely to encourage additional defaults. The program is open to borrowers who have already modified their loans once, perhaps a few years ago when rates were higher. This, at least, is a good idea. So what's the big difference between the new program and the modifications offered previously?

Attorneys for Standard & Poor's (S&P) filed Monday a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit from the federal government accusing the ratings agency of inflating ratings and misrepresenting the creditworthiness of certain securities. Led by Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice announced in early February a complaint against S&P for allegedly defrauding investors in an attempt to gain more business. At the time, Holder noted that his department had identified more than $5 billion in losses to federally insured financial institutions resulting from collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) rated by S&P between March and December 2007.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) ambitious effort to build a National Mortgage Database was not taken lightly by lawmakers during a Senate committee hearing Tuesday. Senators expressed discomfort over the idea of having a federal agency track consumer behavior, despite CFPB director Richard Cordray's continued emphasis on the anonymity the database will provide to individual consumers. Cordray also explained that without the database, the agency can't do its job.

With a sharp jump in prices, existing-home sales fell 0.6 percent in March--the steepest drop since December--to 4.92 million units, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported Monday. Economists had expected a 1.0 percent increase to 5.03 million from February's original report of 4.98 million sales. The median price of an existing single-family home jumped to $184,300, the highest level in seven months. The inventory of homes for sale edged up to 1.93 million units--a 4.7 month supply, both the highest level since November.

What do you do when you find out Santa Claus doesn't exist? That's the situation former vice presidential candidate/House Budget Committee Chair/potential presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) faces now that the study which provided him with the academic support for budget cuts (aimed principally at so-called entitlements) has been undermined. Harvard economists Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in 2010 published a research paper which held that for countries with debt loads equivalent to or greater than 90 percent of annual economic output, ""median growth rates fall by 1 percent, and average growth falls considerably more.""

As the GSEs approach their fifth year in government conservatorship, Congress held a hearing Thursday to evaluate the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA's) role as regulator and conservator. Acting Director Edward DeMarco offered testimony detailing the agency's achievements, and Steve A. Linick, inspector general at the FHFA Office of the Inspector General, highlighted some areas in need of improvement at FHFA. Linick praised the FHFA as it has ""accepted and begun to implement the vast majority of our audit and evaluation recommendations."" He also addressed areas that could use improvement.