by Calculated Risk on 8/24/2020 04:00:00 PM

Note: This is as of August 16th.

From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Declines Slightly to 7.20%

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance decreased by 1 basis point from 7.21% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 7.20% as of August 16, 2020. According to MBA’s estimate, 3.6 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.
...
“The share of loans in forbearance declined for the tenth week in a row, but the rate of improvement has slowed markedly. The extremely high rate of initial claims for unemployment insurance and high level of unemployment remain a concern, and are indications of the challenges many households are facing,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “While new forbearance requests remain low, particularly for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, the pace of exits from forbearance has declined for two straight weeks.”

By stage, 37.91% of total loans in forbearance are in the initial forbearance plan stage, while 61.34% are in a forbearance extension. The remaining 0.75% are forbearance re-entries.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the percent of portfolio in forbearance by investor type over time.  Most of the increase was in late March and early April, and has been trending down for the last ten weeks.

The MBA notes: "Weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) decreased to 0.10 percent from 0.11 percent the previous week."

There hasn't been a pickup in forbearance activity related to the end of the extra unemployment benefits.