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Foreclosure starts dropped off by 15 percent according to Black Knight Financial Services' February 2015 Mortgage Monitor released earlier this week, almost reversing the spike they experienced in January – indicating that foreclosure starts may be leveling off and even nearing pre-recession numbers.

Today’s housing market barely resembles the market that existed five or even four years ago, much less the environment that was in place when Ginnie Mae was created in 1968 or when it issued the world’s first mortgage-backed security (MBS) in 1970.

The March employment summary released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed only 126,000 jobs added for the month, which was less than half of the monthly average (266,000) for the 12 previous months, may have played a role in the lack of growth in consumer optimism. That same BLS March employment summary reported an average wage gain of just 2.1 percent year-over-year up to $24.86 per hour.

New Residential Investment and Home Loan Servicing Solutions (HLSS) announced the mutual termination of a merger agreement originally announced on February 22 and instead announced the two firms have entered into a purchase agreement.

"We have less than one basis point, 0.73 complaints per loan in Q1 of 2013 and while we did see a slight rise through Q4 2014 it’s really insignificant," said Dori Daganhardt, VP of Product Marketing, Data, and Analytics Division with Black Knight, and the author of the white paper. "It doesn’t suggest that we get an A plus as an industry on managing the complaints related to performing loans, but I think it does suggest that there is more discovery that can be done.

Investors who sought low prices on distressed inventory with a high return on investment took advantage of opportunities in Q1. With an absence of traditional homebuyers, investors reduced high distressed saturation rates by creating more demand, thus driving up home prices in key recovering metros, according to Clear Capital.

While this STACR offering will be similar to Freddie Mac's recent STACR transactions, the difference will be that losses will be allocated based on actual losses realized on the related reference obligations as opposed to allocating losses to the debt notes based on a fixed severity approach.

With Fannie Mae's announcement on Thursday that it is going to begin selling pools of non-performing single-family mortgage loans, it is clear that the GSEs are making a strong push to rid themselves of the backlog of deeply delinquent loans on their books five years after the peak of the foreclosure wave.

Distressed sales (short sales and REO property transactions) accounted for just 12.7 percent of residential real estate transactions nationwide in 2014, the lowest share since 2007, according to Black Knight's February 2015 Mortgage Monitor released today.

Vice President Joe Biden, HUD Secretary Julián Castro, and the Obama Administration say they are are committed to leveling the playing field for all Americans and increasing access to safe and affordable housing.