Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) completed approximately 129,000 foreclosure prevention actions during the second quarter of 2012, bringing the total to nearly 2.4 million since they were placed in conservatorship in September 2008.  The two companies completed 50,373 loan modifications, 36,343 repayment plans, 5,352 forbearance plans and 36,496 home forfeiture actions, most of which were short sales.  During the first quarter there were 146,099 foreclosure prevention actions completed with a similar breakdown among the various activities.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported that nearly half of the borrowers who received loan modifications during the quarter saw their monthly payments reduced by more than 30 percent and 29 percent of loan modifications included some principal forbearance.

Serious delinquency rates continued to decline but early delinquencies - where borrowers missed one or two monthly payments - increased during the second quarter.  Loans 30 to 59 days delinquent increased from 497,000 to 539,000 from the first to the second quarter while more serious delinquencies fell from 2.25 million to 2.17 million.  Foreclosure starts were also down, from 226,000 to 186,000 and the number of properties in the GSE's owned real estate portfolios (REO) was down about 10,000 units to 173,000.

The administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has put 984,333 borrowers in modification trials since its inception in 2009 and 424,916 of those borrowers are now in permanent modifications.  Borrowers with permanent modifications through non-HAMP programs total 522,652 since October 2009 and 53 percent of permanent modifications in the second quarter were non-HAMP modifications.

HAMP modifications have performed appreciably better than non-HAMP modifications throughout the life of the program and performance has improved as the program gathered more experience.  For example, of loans originated under HAMP in the 3^rd quarter of 2011 80 percent were current and performing nine months later.  The corresponding non-HAMP modifications had a 71 percent performance rate.

The Foreclosure Prevention Report issued by FHFA on Wednesday also contains a state-by-state report on delinquencies and foreclosure prevention activities.