Mortgages in Active Forbearance Increase After Six Straight Weeks of Declines

According to Black Knight, a Jacksonville Florida based provider of integrated technology, services, data and analytics to the mortgage and real estate industries, the number of mortgages in active pandemic-related bailout plans rose by 21,000 in the past week after declining for six straight weeks. The increase was not across the entire spectrum of mortgage types, but among bank-held and private-labeled security loans (28,000), and, to a lesser extent, among FHA/VA loans (2,000). Those increases were offset by a decline of 9,000 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans in forbearance. By loan type, 4.7% of all Fannie and Freddie-backed loans are in forbearance, while 11.2% of all FHA/VA loans are. For private label and bank-held loans, that share is 7.3%. In a prepared statement Andy Walden, director of market research at Black Knight said, “As of the 29th [of September], nearly 800,000 forbearance plans were still set to expire in September, down from 2 million at the start of the month. The data is still coming in, but over the past week, we’ve seen a roughly 80% extension rate. Given that there are another million plans for which October marks the last payment covered by forbearance, we should expect to see heightened levels of expiration/extension activity in the coming weeks.”