Daily Dose

At a time where more and more people are moving into cities, Castro said there are 7.7 million low-income households that pay more than half their incomes on rent, and don’t receive any government assistance.

Cash sales made up 35 percent of all home sales in December 2014, according to data released by CoreLogic today. December marks the 24th consecutive month of declines in year-to-year share numbers, which has fallen each month since January 2013. Because of seasonality, cash sale comparisons are best when looking at year-to-year data. Cash transactions hit its peak in January 2011 when cash transactions made up 46.5 percent of total home sales. Before the housing crisis, the cash sale share of total home sales averaged at about 25 percent. If the trend of cash sales decline continues at the same rate, the share should reach 25 percent by the middle of 2017.

Level of affordability varies by state with Washington D.C., Hawaii and Alaska all being less affordable now than in the pre-bubble years. In Washington D.C. the current payment-to-income ratio is 40 percent, which is lower than the 62 percent ratio shown at the peak of the housing bubble. Michigan, Texas, and Florida currently have ratios under the national average, with Michigan having a low ratio at 16.9 percent.

MetLife admitted that from September 2008 through March 2012, it repeatedly certified for FHA insurance mortgage loans that did not meet HUD underwriting requirements. The bank admitted it was aware that a substantial percentage of these loans were not eligible for FHA mortgage insurance due to its own internal quality control findings.

Other metrics that changed little month-over-month in February, according to BLS, include the civilian labor force participation rate (62.8 percent, and it has remained between 62.7 and 62.9 since April 2014), the number of long-term unemployment persons, or those unemployed for more than 27 weeks (2.7 million), involuntary part-time workers, or workers employed part-time for economic reasons (6.6 million), persons marginally attached to the labor force (2.2 million), and discouraged workers, or those who are not currently looking for work because they believe there are no jobs available (732,000).

In the decision, Justice David Saxe wrote for a five-judge panel that the Bank of New York Mellon did not abuse discretion in arranging the settlement, but the court also said Barbara Kapnick, the state judge who approved the accord in January, erred in excluding claims by investors regarding loan modifications on the ground that the trustee didn’t properly investigate their strength, according to Reuters.

Banks were tested under a hypothetical scenario featuring a deep recession with unemployment peaking at 10 percent, a decline in home prices of 25 percent, a stock market drop of nearly 60 percent and together the banks would see a projected $340 million total in loan losses. Results shows the bank’s aggregate tier 1 common capital ratio, which compares high-quality capital to risk weighted assets, would fall from 11.9 percent in the third quarter of 2014 to a minimum level of 8.2 percent in the scenario. This minimum level is higher than the 5.5 percent measure in 2009 and the 7.9 percent ratio from last year.

“The price appreciation we’ve witnessed over recent months seems to be working to encourage more sellers to put their homes on the market,” said Jonathan Smoke, realtor.com chief economist. “A higher level of inventory along with growing demand should result in more contracts for both existing and new homes in February, leading to more closings in March.”

In January 2009, Bank of America received its second bailout of $20 million from the Fed to help stabilize the company after its purchase of Merrill Lynch. At the time, Merrill Lynch had lost more than $15 billion in the previous quarter and Bank of America had lost $2.4 billion.

According to Stegman, under the current system taxpayers remain at risk and the government has yet to provide a long-term plan for the housing market. Under conservatorship GSE senior employees can reap substantial profits while leaving taxpayers the burden of covering the enormous losses. Flaws like this one can only be changed by law.