Daily Dose

A recent Corelogic report found that foreign buyers are pulling back from the U.S. housing market, but this trend doesn't seem to be influencing Texas markets, where international homebuying activity is gaining momentum.

The Federal Reserve reported in its August 2015 Beige Book released Wednesday that economic activity continued to expand across most regions and sectors, while the majority of reports on residential real estate markets across the 12 Fed districts were positive.

U.S. banking institutions that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) earned an aggregate net income of $43.0 billion in the second quarter of 2015, up $2.9 billion from a year ago, the FDIC announced in their Quarterly Banking Profile released Wednesday. The $43.0 billion second quarter profits, the highest quarterly income on record, was mostly driven by a $3.6 billion rise in net operating revenue, the FDIC said.

While existing-home sales have seen solid gains in 2015, reaching levels not seen since before the crisis seven years ago, the rate of increase may be slowing down, according to data released by Auction.com on Tuesday.

Low mortgage rates and stronger consumer confidence are driving home sales and home prices upward, according to CoreLogic's July 2015 Home Price Index Report.

Getting a mortgage has been progressively getting easier since 2012, however the first few months of this year indicate that credit is tightening and obtaining a mortgage is no easier than it was a year ago.

Mortgage fraud risk is being lowered by changes in residential origination practices and new regulation, according to a Fitch Ratings report released Tuesday.

Agency purchase loans became just a bit riskier in July 2015, climbing upward by 0.6 percentage points from the previous July and marking the seventh consecutive month with a year-over-year increase.

HUD and the Federal Housing Administration are urging homebuyers to have their homes inspected prior to purchasing to avoid unanticipated issues.

First American Financial Corporation’s Loan Application Defect Index for July 2015 found that the mortgage loan defect rate rose 4.9 percent in July compared to June.