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GSEs Have Totaled Nearly 3 Million Home Retention Actions During Conservatorship

Fannie-Freddie-logos [1]Fannie Mae [2] and Freddie Mac [3] combined to complete nearly 18,000 home retention actions for distressed homeowners in May 2015, bringing the total since the conservatorship began up to nearly 3 million, according to the FHFA [4]'s May 2015 Foreclosure Prevention Report [5] released Tuesday.

The two GSEs completed 17,930 home retention actions in May for families facing foreclosure. Those actions included both Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP [6]) and proprietary loan modifications (14,069), repayment plans (3,040), forbearance plans (721), and charge-offs-in-lieu (100). May's totals brought the number of home retention actions up to 2,899,632 – only 100,368 short of 3 million – since the fourth quarter of 2008, which was the first full quarter after the FHFA's conservatorship of the GSEs began.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed 2,882 non-home retention solutions in May, including short sales (2,088) and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure (794), bringing to the total of non-retention solutions since the first full quarter of the conservatorship to 620,869. Combined with the nearly 2.9 million home retention actions completed since the conservatorship began, the GSEs have completed more than 3.5 million foreclosure prevention actions.

More than half of the total foreclosure prevention actions completed by the FHFA in nearly seven years (1.82 million) have come in the form of permanent loan modifications, according to FHFA. The share of mods with principal forbearance held steady from April to May at 19 percent, while the share of mods with extend-term declined to 47 percent largely due to improved prices and a declining HAMP-eligible population.

Foreclosure starts on GSE-backed mortgage loans ticked up 5 percent from April to May, from 19,500 to 20,561. The share of seriously delinquent loans (90 days or more overdue or in foreclosure) declined from 1.70 percent in April down to 1.65 in May while the share of loans 30-59 delinquent rose up from 1.31 percent (365,000 loans) to 1.47 percent (408,000 loans). The share of loans 60-plus days delinquent or more declined slightly from 2.05 percent (569,000 loans) down to 2.02 percent (561,646). Third-party and foreclosure sales dropped by 8 percent month-over-month in May down to 9,929, according to FHFA.

Click here [5] to see the FHFA's entire May 2015 Foreclosure Prevention Report.