Millions of homeowners are now delaying their mortgage payments
By Anna Bahney, CNN Business
Updated 6:54 PM ET, Mon April 20, 2020
As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on the US economy, millions of homeowners have taken advantage of a government program that enables them to reduce or delay their mortgage payments.
The payment relief, or forbearance, enables homeowners with federally-backed loans who are impacted by the pandemic to delay or reduce their mortgage payment and to get a break on the accumulating interest for up to a year.
In the week ending April 12, the share of loans in forbearance jumped to 5.95%. That's a 60% increase from the prior week, according to a Mortgage Bankers Association survey of more than three quarters of home loans, or about 38.3 million loans. At the beginning of March, before the coronavirus pandemic caused widespread shutdowns across the US, only 0.25% of all loans were in forbearance.
"Homeowners are contacting their mortgage servicers seeking relief, leading to a sharp increase in the share of loans in forbearance across all loan types," said Mike Fratantoni, MBA's chief economist in a statement.
He said that while mortgage servicers continue to receive a very high number of forbearance requests, they were down somewhat compared to the prior week. Call times went down, too, with hold times dropping in half from 10 minutes to five.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/success/mortgage-forbearance-coronavirus/index.html