Fannie Mae [1]and Freddie Mac [2] completed a total of 24,121 foreclosure prevention actions in August 2018, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency’s report [3](FHFA) released on Tuesday. This brings their total number of prevention actions to 4,227,732. In addition, the serious delinquency rate fell from 0.84 percent at the end of July to 0.79 percent at the end of August.
Report Breakdown
FHFA’s current report further discusses the main reasons contributing to delinquency including curtailment of income at 32 percent, excessive obligations at 17 percent, unemployment at 8 percent, illness of principal mortgage or family member at 5 percent, and marital difficulties at 4 percent.
In enterprises foreclosures, third party and foreclosure sales reflected an increase from 4,116 in July to 4,643 in August. Foreclosures starts, on the other hand, recorded a decline from 11,639 in July to 11,499 in August.
According to the report, there were 752 short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure completed in August, which is a decline of three percent from the previous month.
The report reveals over half of the prevention actions dealt with permanent loan modifications, out of which 19,345 were completed in August, with a total of 2,276,9989 since the GSEs first came under conservatorship. Twenty-four percent of modifications were ones with principal forbearance. The report also points out modifications with extend-term comprised only 53 percent of loan modifications in the month.
State-by-State Glance
Florida leads the nation in the total number of delinquent loans followed by Texas, California, New York and Illinois.
The report finds that New York continues to have the highest number of deeply delinquent loans followed by Florida and New Jersey, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.