According to Black Knight’s latest forbearance data analysis [1], a common trend continued as the number of active forbearances fell this week, driven by month-end expiration activity.
Nationwide, the number of U.S. homeowners with forbearance plans stood at approximately 2.69 million as of March 2, or 5.1% of American homeowners, falling by 22,000 from last week, and a decline of -0.8%. Of that total, FHA/VA forbearances comprised 9.2% of that share, which fell by 13,000; GSE forbearances comprised 3.2% of that total, which declined by 8,000; and portfolio/PLS forbearances accounted for 5.2% of all forbearance plans, which fell by just 1,000 this week.
Black Knight recently reported that in January 2021, the national mortgage delinquency rate fell to 5.9% [2], a 0.9% monthly dip from December 2020’s total [3] of 6.08%.
Come early April, nearly 1.1 million homeowners with forbearance plans scheduled to expire at the end of March (just over 600,000 of that total are 12-month expirations) are set to exit their plans.
Despite the weekly decline in outstanding forbearance plans, the month-over-month rate of improvement has slowed, falling from -2% to -1.3%.
Recent forbearance and foreclosure moratorium extensions [4] taken by the Biden Administration have reduced near-term risk, but may also lengthen the recovery period and a return to normalcy. Black Knight recently reported [5] that at the current rate of improvement, 1.8 million mortgages will still be seriously delinquent at the end of June when foreclosure moratoriums on government-backed loans are currently slated to lift.
