by Calculated Risk on 3/26/2021 10:52:00 AM

Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance.

This data is as of March 23rd.

From Black Knight: Another Week of Improvement in Forbearance Numbers

Active forbearance plans fell again this week, dropping by another 19,000 (-0.7%) from last Tuesday. In total, this puts the number of active plans down by 134,000 over the last month – a 5% reduction. This monthly decline represents the strongest rate of improvement since late November 2020 and is a direct result of servicers working through the 1.2 million plans that entered this month with scheduled March month-end expirations for extension and/or removal.

Of particular note when taking a look at this week’s numbers: even with such strong monthly improvement, there are still more than 460,000 active plans with March month-end expirations, which provides the potential for additional improvement in the coming weeks.
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Click on graph for larger image.

Early extension activity suggests that mortgage servicers continue to approach forbearance plans in three-month increments, with the bulk of would-be March expirations being extended out through June. Plan extensions have accounted for 75% of all extension/removal activity in recent weeks, but removals are up simply as a result of the volume of expirations that were scheduled for this month.

Finally, the McDash Flash Payment Tracker shows that 90.7% of observed borrowers had made their payment through March 22, up from 89.8% at the same time in February suggesting that the recent improvement in outstanding mortgage delinquencies may resume in March after taking a step back last month. We’ll keep watching to see if this upward trend continues, and will post another weekly update on this blog next Friday, April 2.
emphasis added

The number of loans in forbearance has slowly declined over the last few months.