The Federal Housing
Financing agency reported there have now been over a quarter million permanent
mortgage loan modifications for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgages arranged
under the Home Affordable Modification Program.
While it was substantially below the 88,600 permanent modifications achieved
during Quarter II, 35,400 trial modifications were converted to permanent
status in the third quarter, bringing the total to 260,000 over the 18 months
since the program began.
FHFA's Third Quarter
2010 Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report issued on Monday includes
information on all of the foreclosure prevention efforts undertaken by the two
government sponsored enterprises (Enterprises) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, including
HAMP, the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP,) and other foreclosure prevention
actions.
Completed foreclosure
prevention actions of all types were down 16 percent during the quarter to a
total of 227,300. Most of the decrease
came from the numbers of modifications - down 14 percent from 171,176 to
146,507, mostly attributable to HAMP - and repayment plans which decreased from
46,353 to 33,964.
Much of the backlog
of borrowers who earlier seemed more or less stuck in HAMP trial modifications has
been cleared out in recent months. There
are now 88,197 Enterprise borrowers in trial status compared to 202,408 at the
end of the second quarter. Under HARP a
total of 479,894 mortgages have been refinanced since the Enterprises were put
into federal conservatorship, a 26 percent increase from the cumulative number
at the end of Quarter Two. There were
29,465 short sales completed by the Enterprises in Q3 compared to 29,375 in Q2.
Foreclosure starts
and completed third-party and foreclosure sales increased 23 percent quarter
over quarter with 339,000 starts and 138,100 sales.
Loans modified in
the first three quarters of 2010 are performing substantially better in the
first three months after modification than has been the experience in earlier
periods. FHFA reports that less than 10
percent of loans modified in the last three quarters (beginning in Q4 2009) were
60 or more days delinquent three months after modification. Prior to the fourth quarter last year the
three month 30-day delinquency rate was in double digits - at 19 percent in Q3
2009. While only two quarters of data is
available for the 60-day rate, it is equally impressive. During the first three quarters of 2009 the
rate was over 30 percent. In Q4 2009 and
Q1 2010 it has averaged 15 percent.
The short term
delinquency rate in the Enterprise portfolios increased slightly from 2.19
percent to 2.28 percent during the third quarter but longer term delinquencies
were down. Loans that were 60+ days delinquent
declined for the third consecutive quarter.
There were nearly 110,000 fewer loans in that bucket, bringing the
delinquency rate down from 5.36 percent in the second quarter to 5.06 percent. Days 90+ days overdue or in foreclosure were
down from 4.58 percent to 4.26 percent.