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Rood said millennials are generally drawn to live in urban areas because of convenience, lifestyle, and walkable amenities, but they are paying 30 to 40 percent more in rents than they would be paying if they owned a home – and a result, they cannot save enough money for a downpayment for a house.

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.

As the August 1 deadline for the Truth in Lending/RESPA Integrated Disclosures (TRID) nears, lenders are preparing for the multiple ways their loan operation will be impacted by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau requirements.

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.