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The number of active plans dropped by another 33,000 (-1.3%) from last Tuesday.
In total, this puts the number of active plans down by 172,000 over the last month, a 6.3% reduction. That’s the strongest rate of improvement since late November 2020 and is a direct result of servicers reviewing the 1.2 million March expirations that were scheduled to expire at March month-end for extension and/or removal.
Note: even with such strong improvement, some 300,000 scheduled March expirations remain with another 655,000 on tap for April, which provides the potential for additional improvement in coming weeks.
As of March 30, 2.54 million homeowners remain in forbearance, representing 4.8% of all homeowners with mortgages.
Weekly declines were seen across all investor classes. GSE plans were down 15,000, FHA/VA plans down 12,000, and plan volumes among portfolio/PLS mortgages fell by 6,000 for the week.
Forbearance starts hit their lowest weekly volume since the start of the pandemic, with less than 30,000 plan starts this week. Nearly 80% of extension/removal activity resulted in the extension of forbearance, the highest share since early January.
Servicers continue to approach forbearance plans in three-month increments, with the bulk of would-be March expirations being extended out through June.
