The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released its Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report for the third quarter.
The report shows that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the enterprises, completed 43,356 foreclosure prevention actions during the quarter. This raises the total number of homeowners who have been helped to 6,861,827 since the start of conservatorships in September 2008.
Further, the report shows that 33 percent of loan modifications completed in the third quarter reduced borrowers’ monthly payments by more than 20 percent. Also, the number of refinances fell from 93,952 in the second quarter to 83,522 in the third quarter.
In addition, serious delinquency rates declined slightly from 0.55 percent to 0.54 percent at the end of the third quarter. This is below Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans (3.34 percent), Veterans Affairs (VA) loans (1.99 percent), and all loans (1.52 percent).
The report also revealed that there were 47,672 loans in forbearance, representing approximately 0.15 percent of the enterprises’ single-family conventional book of business. This is down from 54,109 or 0.17 percent at the end of the second quarter of 2023. Roughly 2 percent of these loans have been on a forbearance plan for more than 12 months.
Additionally, the 60+ day delinquency rate increased slightly from 0.72 percent at the end of the second quarter of 2023 to 0.73 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2023.
The number of foreclosures also increased 9 percent to 19,489 while third-party and foreclosure sales fell 4 percent to 3,615 in the third quarter.
Finally, the enterprises Real Estate Owned (REO) Activity & Inventory decreased 0.4 percent from 11,061 in the second quarter to 11,019 in the third quarter, as property dispositions outpaced acquisitions. The total number of property acquisitions decreased slightly to 1,568, while dispositions fell 11 percent to 1,573 during the quarter.