Daily Dose

U.S. home prices for February were up by 4.6 percent year-over-year and 0.7 percent for the month, according to a home price index (HPI) report released by Black Knight Financial Services this morning. This is the largest monthly gain in home prices since June of last year.

Philadelphia-based LL Funds, which manages more than $1.5 billion market value non-Agency residential mortgage-backed securities, said in the white paper released Friday that the institutional investors' claims of non-performance on the part of Ocwen, made through law firm Gibbs and Bruns, are flawed.

New Jersey federal court documents filed earlier this week revealed that Prudential Insurance Co. has moved to settle its ongoing lawsuits with Bank of America NA, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., First Franklin Financial Group, and a number of lenders in the mortgage industry. The suits, which were first filed in March 2013, alleged Bank of America and others knowingly sold Prudential $2.1 billion in low-quality mortgage-backed securities—and made false statements about them.

Last week, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker had proposed a plan for overhauling the federal regulatory system—one that included eliminating the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) altogether. Since dubbed the “Volcker plan,” the head of the OCC, Thomas Curry, has come out against the proposal, saying it would be ineffective at solving the nation’s regulatory issues.

FICO has announced it is expanding its Score Open Access program, which offers complimentary credit score access to consumers with credit management problems. Now, the program will also provide credit and financial counseling to approximately one million Americans.

The housing market will move steadily in 2015 driven by solid labor market improvements, low mortgage rates, an economy that is growing, and pent-up demand–but the pace should really pick up next year, according to economists who attended the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) 2015 Spring Construction Forecast Webinar earlier this week.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Bank of America in August 2013, accusing the bank's Countrywide division of misrepresenting the mortgage-backed securities it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the years leading up to the financial crisis through a program known as the High Speed Swim Lane (HSSL, commonly known as "Hustle").

The government alleges that Quicken had a "value appeal" process in place where Quicken would request an inflated value for a home appraisal if the appraisal was too low to approve for a loan, and that the lender granted "management exceptions" in which managers would allow underwriters to break the rules to approve a loan. According to the complaint, Quicken's most senior executives were aware of these practices based on several emails.

The report also reveals that the median sales price of homes sold in March was $277,000, while the average price was $343,000. Additionally, by the end of March, the number of new homes on the market was 213,000. At the current sales rate, this supply should last approximately 5.3 months. Results of the report are gathered through sample surveys, and the majority of houses are chosen randomly from selected building permits. Census field representatives collect the data, visit permit offices, and track when single-family units are started, completed and sold.

The most improved states in the last three months were Oregon, Michigan, Florida, California and Kentucky, with Oregon jumping more than 2 percent. And on a year-over-year basis, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Oregon and Rhode Island saw the biggest increases. In fact, since this time last year, MiMi values for Nevada have improved more than 11 percent.