Daily Dose

Florida's housing market continued on a steady growth track throughout the third quarter, though improvements were slightly subdued compared to spring and early summer. Florida Realtors' chief economist, Dr. John Tuccillo, said the quarterly numbers reinforce trends the group has seen on a month-to-month basis.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) closed down the Palm Desert-based Frontier Bank—also known as El Paseo Bank—citing a lack of assets and earnings "due to unsafe and unsound practices."

According to a motion filed with New York's Southern District Court, Bank of America and US Bancorp agreed to pay $69 million to a number of state and local pension funds that lost millions from their investment in MBS purchased from Washington Mutual before its collapse in 2008.

With the midterm election in the rearview, Democrats are circling the wagons to protect what will certainly be a top priority on the Republicans' list of changes to make—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

In a panel at the 2014 Realtors Conference and Expo, experts discussed the changing face of American homebuyers and the potential effects of these changes on the housing market. One of the biggest topics for the panel was the state of millennial homeownership.

While home sales prices posted moderate gains in September, the housing market recovery as a whole is moving slowly, according to the Wells Fargo Economics Group Housing Wrap Up for October 2014.

To say the Republicans have an uphill battle ahead where GSE reform is concerned is an understatement. The president has the power of the veto pen and while both sides have vowed to work together on areas that they can disagree, the extent to which he would support major Republican led legislation remains to be seen.

What do Harry Potter's Ministry of Magic and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have in common? Neither seems to be anticipating developments that are pretty obvious to the rest of us, says GuardianDocs President Jonathan Kunkle.

For months, NAHB has been reporting that recovery in the national and in most metro markets is inching its way back to normal levels. The latest report virtually mirrors the LMI report released in August, which stated that 56 of 350 metros were at or better than normal, and the national housing market overall was 89 percent of where it should be.

Forty percent of American consumers polled in Fannie's latest National Housing Survey said they believe the economy is on the right track at the moment, flat from September's survey but up 13 percentage points over the past year. Housing attitudes were decidedly more mixed, however.