Ginnie Mae

A booming housing market contrasts with a slow-to-improve job market, making for lopsided improvement in the number of troubled mortgages, according to numbers from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The overall forbearance rate was under 6% for the first time since April as another large swath of loans fell out of CARES Act coverage, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Forbearance rates dropped below 7% for the first time in six months, but the decrease is largely due to the ending of the initial six-month term of forbearance granted by the legislation, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

GSE mortgages in forbearance fell for the 17th straight week, spearheading the overall downtrend, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The net share of mortgages in Ginnie Mae securitizations with suspended payments appears to be stabilizing, but the number of new requests creates doubt about whether it will subside.

The percentage of borrowers who have asked to temporarily suspend payments due to coronavirus-related hardships is down overall, but in the Ginnie Mae market, they're still inching up.

The restrictions on the pooling of loans with any interest term based on Libor will be effective for traditional mortgage-backed securities issued starting Jan. 21, 2021, and earlier for reverse-mortgage securitizations.

After flattening over the three prior weeks, the number of loans going into coronavirus-related forbearance dove at a rate not seen since early August, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Also the Federal Housing Administration, which is a key contributor of government-insured loans to Ginnie securitizations, recently set new conditions on mortgage applicants that have been in forbearance.

"The current economic crisis continues to disproportionately impact borrowers with FHA and VA loans," said Mike Fratantoni, the MBA's senior vice president and chief economist.