Black Knight: "Forbearance Declines Hit Mid-Month Lull"

After two weeks of sizable drops in the number of active forbearance plans (as hundreds of thousands of homeowners reached the end of their allowable terms), we saw much more modest improvement this week – the same mid-month lull in removal activity that we’ve been reporting on for many months now.

According to our McDash Flash daily forbearance tracking dataset, the number of active forbearance plans fell by just 7,300 (-0.6%) this week, with declines of 10,500 among FHA/VA loans and 2,800 among GSE mortgages being partially offset by a 6,000 rise in plan volumes among portfolio and PLS mortgages. That’s substantially less than last week’s 143,000 (10%) drop.

As of October 19, 1.24 million mortgage holders remain in COVID-19 related forbearance plans, representing 2.3% of all active mortgages, including 1.3% of GSE, 3.9% of FHA/VA and 3% of portfolio held and privately securitized loans.

Click on graph for larger image.

Still, on a monthly basis, improvement remains strong, with forbearances declining by 356,000 (-22.3%) over the past 30 days, and the past few weeks have seen the fastest monthly rates of improvement since the start of the pandemic.

Some 432,000 homeowners left forbearance in the first 19 days of October, making it the largest single month in terms of exit volumes since October of last year. And with more than 280,000 plans still up for review through the end of October, significant opportunity remains for additional declines through the first few weeks of November.

emphasis added