by Calculated Risk on 3/01/2021 04:00:00 PM

Note: This is as of February 21st.

From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases Slightly to 5.23%

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance increased by 1 basis point from 5.22% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 5.23% as of February 21, 2021. According to MBA’s estimate, 2.6 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.
...
"A small increase in new forbearance requests, coupled with exits decreasing to match a survey low, led to the overall share of loans in forbearance increasing for the first time in five weeks,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “The largest rise in the forbearance share was for portfolio and PLS loans, due to increases for both Ginnie Mae buyouts and other portfolio/PLS loans.”

Fratantoni added, “The winter storm that impacted Texas and other states did lead to some temporary disruptions at servicer call centers, but these centers quickly returned to full operations.”
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, then trended down - and has mostly moved slowly down recently.

The MBA notes: "Total weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) increased relative to the prior week: from 0.06% to 0.07%."