Secondary Market

In a report filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, NMS Monitor Joseph A. Smith, Jr., reported the results of the retesting for Q1 2014 and also outlined several actions Ocwen has taken to improve its internal review group (IRG), which Smith has been investigating since May 2014.

Royce said in a statement on his website that it is "unconscionable" that Freddie Mac would elevate the pay of its CEO to that level while taxpayers are still on the hook. The fact that the GSEs are still under conservatorship of the FHFA, where they have been since September 2008, is still a contentious one among politicians and stakeholders in the housing market.

Deutsche Bank sued Morgan Stanley in April 2014, claiming that the New York-based investment firm breached a contract by misrepresenting the quality of about $735 million worth of loans held in a trust in in which Deutsche Bank was the trustee and Morgan Stanley was the sponsor.

Fannie Mae's gross mortgage portfolio has now expanded in two of the last three months following an increase at a compound annualized rate of 7.8 percent in March, according to Fannie Mae's March 2015 Monthly Volume Summary released Thursday.

The loans being offered in the pool are deeply delinquent and are geographically diverse. All the loans in the pool are currently being serviced by Ocwen Financial. Bids are due from qualified bidders for the pool on May 20 and the sale is expected to settle sometime in July.

Morgan Stanley, a worldwide investment firm that is headquartered in New York, has had ongoing legal troubles in the last year or so with regards to its sales of RMBS prior to the financial crisis, resulting in a series of settlements totaling hundreds of millions.

The claim was finally settled Wednesday, when both parties filed a stipulation of dismissal with prejudice. Though terms of the settlement were not stipulated in the court documents, they did say each party would be responsible for its own expenses stemming from the lawsuit.

While the demand for high-quality mortgage-backed securities has been slow since the housing crisis, Fitch said that more major institutional buyers that are hungry for new, higher-yielding investment opportunities have emerged as suitors for bulk NPL pools. Previously, distressed mortgage buyers tended to be specialized alternative investment firms.

The latest offering, STACR Series 2015-DNA1, represents a couple of firsts for Freddie Mac's STACR program: it is the enterprise's first transaction in which losses will be allocated based on actual losses realized on related reference obligations instead of using a fixed severity approach to allocate losses.

Bank of America was ordered to pay a $1.27 billion civil penalty in July 2014 as a result of its alleged role in the Hustle case. The bank has been fighting to overturn that verdict since, claiming that the Hustle program ended prior to its July 2008 acquisition of Countrywide. Rakoff rejected a motion by the bank to have the verdict reversed in early February. He also rejected the bank's motion for a new trial at that time.