The U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations recently approved the FY2016 Transportation, HUD (THUD), and related agencies Appropriations Bill. The major goals of the bill is to increase the efficiency and affordability of federal housing programs and provide funding for transportation and infrastructure priorities, working within the guidelines of the Budget Control Act.

J.K. Huey, SVP of asset management and preservation with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, has been appointed the chairperson of the Five Star Institute National Mortgage Servicing Association (NMSA), according to an announcement from Five Star.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently released their Monthly Interest Rate Survey (MIRS) finding that on a national level, interest rates on conventional purchase-money mortgages decreased from April to May, according to several indices of new mortgage contracts.

According to new research by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) International Center on Housing Risk (ICHR), the FHA’s price cut was largely capitalized into the purchase of higher priced homes. The research reviewed over 2.5 million first-time homebuyer loans. Edward Pinto, the research author and co-director of AEI’s International Center on Housing Risk said that the effort to reduce mortgage premiums did little to expand access to middle-and lower-wealth borrowers, while the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and other housing interest groups reaped the benefits of the higher home prices.

ReverseVision, Inc., recently announced in a press release it has added credit reporting capabilities to RV Exchange (RVX), ReverseVision’s reverse loan origination system (RLOS) platform. With this new technology, reverse mortgage lenders can automatically import a borrower’s credit information directly into RVX’s Financial Assessment (FA) module.

For the first time, over 7,700 consumer complaints about problems they are facing with financial companies concerning mortgages, bank accounts, credit cards, and debt collection, among others, were released today by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on their Consumer Complaint Database, according to a press release.

More Americans are sleeping better at night knowing that the economy is recovering. Those Americans that are losing sleep over financial stress is declining in the U.S., according to a new CreditCards.com poll. The national poll, commissioned by CreditCards.com, also found that 62 percent of adult Americans are losing sleep over at least one financial problem. This is 7 percentage points lower than the amount in June 2009, the last time this poll was conducted, but higher than 56 percent in 2007.

The wealth gap among Americans widened dramatically after the housing market collapse. This placed many black homeowners at a huge economic disadvantage, leaving them with limited access to servicing, lenders, and credit. New research by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that all households lost wealth from 2007 to 2009 at the height of the housing bust and recession. However, in 2009, median white household wealth ceased to decrease, while median black household wealth dropped steadily.

Millennials have become more positive when it comes purchasing their first home and are primed to gain market share in the second half of the year, based on the results of Realtor.com’s Consumer Behavior Survey. Relator.com found that 65 percent of the survey respondents indicated that they intend to buy a home within three months, up from 54 percent in January.

The housing market has been seeing some noticeable changes this year as home values move upward. According to the May Zillow Real Estate Market Reports, bidding wars are pushing home values up in the nation’s most popular housing markets, although home values are not anywhere near their peak points during the real estate bubble in smaller markets.