Foreclosure Activity Down Across the Board

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are seeing declines in foreclosure activity across the board. According to the February 2017 Foreclosure Prevention Report released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency on Thursday, serious delinquencies, short sales, deeds-in-lieu, third-party sales, and foreclosure sales were all down for the month of February.

In total, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) took 14,549 foreclosure prevention actions for the month and had completed more than 3.8 million to date. Of February’s 14K-plus loan modifications, just over 9,000 were permanent ones. This marks more than 2 million permanent GSE loan modifications since the FHFA became the conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008.

Of Fannie and Freddie’s February loan modifications, 19 percent had principal forbearance, while extend-term modifications accounted for 44 percent—something the FHFA attributes to ever-climbing housing prices. This is the second month in a row the number of extend-term mods has sat at 44 percent.

Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed more than 1,100 short sales and nearly 500 deeds-in-lieu in February—together marking a dip of 7 percent compared to January. Both foreclosure sales and third-party sales fell over the month, too, dropping 12 percent since January. The GSEs completed 5,909 of these sales in February, versus the more than 6,700 in the month previous.

Serious delinquencies were also down over the month, falling from 1.12 percent in January to 1.11 percent in February, as were loans delinquent 60 or more days, which dropped from 414,612 to 409,412 month-over-month. Earlier-stage delinquencies were up in February, however, with loans 30 to 59 days delinquent rising from 377,000 to 404,000 for the month.

GSE foreclosure starts also experienced an uptick for the month, with a jump of 11 percent when compared to January. February saw 18,447 GSE foreclosure starts in total.

Read the full Foreclosure Prevention Report and data set at FHFA.gov.