This week’s rise continues the trend of mid-month increases that have become commonplace since the recovery began.

Despite the weekly increase, the monthly rate of decline held steady at -2%, continuing the trend of very slow but steady improvement in the number of outstanding forbearance cases. Remember, monthly declines have been averaging less than 2% since early December.

According the McDash Flash daily mortgage performance data set, as of February 23, 2.7 million homeowners (5.1% of all mortgage-holders), remain in active forbearance. This includes 9.3% of FHA/VA, 3.2% of GSE and 5.2% of portfolio/private mortgages

Once again, portfolio-held and privately-securitized loans saw the largest increase in plans (+16,000 / +2.4%), followed FHA/VA loans, which saw active forbearance plans rise by 7,000 (+0.6%). As was the case last week, GSE loans were the only cohort to see any sort of decline (-2,000; -0.2%).

Some 160,000 forbearance plans are set to hit scheduled expiration points at the end of February.