September Housing Scorecard Released

The Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Treasury have issued the administration's September Housing Scorecard.  The scorecard is largely a round-up of information on housing and housing finance from sources such as S&P/Case-Shiller, RealtyTrac, and the Census Bureau and other government agencies, all of which have previously been covered here.  It also incorporates by reference data on the Making Home Affordable Program which, in this month's report, covers summary data through August. 

The Making Home Affordable Program, which recently began using the acronym MHA rather than HAMP, reports that it has now enrolled 1,688,038 homeowners in trial modification programs since the program began in April 2009; 26,577 of those were enrolled in August.  Since the July report 25,434 trials have been converted, bringing the total of permanent modifications to 816,833.   

At the end of August there were 690,969 permanent modifications still in active status.  A total of 125,864 permanent modifications have been cancelled, usually because the borrower had missed three consecutive monthly payments although about 2,000 of the loans were paid.   

Since the MFA program was revamped in June 2010 and program administrators began more rigorous supervision of servicers the number of borrowers seemingly trapped in the trial program has steadily dropped.  At the end of August there were 27,345 borrowers (out of 105,860 active trials) who had remained in trial status for six months or longer compared to 190,412 trials that had lasted for over six months in May 2010.   The average length of the trial period for those converted to a permanent HAMP modification has decreased from 5.3 months for trials started prior to June 1, 2010, to 3.5 months for trials started June 1, 2010 or later.

Several other types of homeowner assistance are run under the MHA name.  The Second Lien Modifications Program (2MP) provides assistance to homeowners to modify or extinguish a second lien so that the first lien can also be modified.  To date that program has enrolled 40,654 borrowers and has modified 36,464 second liens (1,433 through partial extinguishment) and fully extinguished 3,642.  The average amount of the second liens extinguished was $68,042.

Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) offers incentives for homeowners who wish to exit their homes through a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.  To date 28,953 homeowners have been accepted into the program and 15,954 have completed HAFA transactions.  Of those, 423 homeowners surrendered their deeds and the remainder completed a short sale.  Almost 10,000 homeowners remain active in the program.

The Treasury Unemployment Program (UP) provides temporary forbearance to homeowners who are unemployed.  To date 13,993 homeowners have enrolled in the program.

Nine of the 12 largest servicers involved the day-to-day operations of the MFA program now have trial to permanent modification conversion rate exceeding 70 percent for homeowners who started the program after the June 2010 program changes.  Seven of those have conversion rates exceeding 80 percent. 

Only one servicer now has a trial period that materially exceeds the program average of 3.5 months; (one small servicer averages 3.6 months.)  Trials administered by JP Morgan Chase have an average duration of 4.6 months.