United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia on Tuesday called embattled Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria “a great leader” who is “doing good things” amid the coronavirus pandemic. “Mark Calabria is trying to do the right thing,” Ishbia said in an interview with National Mortgage Professional Magazine on Facebook Live. “It’s really easy to judge people and say I wish Mark Calabria would do X, I wish the CEO of Fannie Mae would do Y, I wish the Fed would do Z, Trump would do A. He’s doing his best to try to help not just mortgage lenders but everybody. He’s overseeing Fannie and Freddie. Ishbia continued, “I would tell him to keep up the great work, continue to listen…
By Jim Perskie The number of loans in forbearance continues to rise, with nearly 6 percent of all mortgages in pause as borrowers cope with economic hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The share of loans in forbearance climbed from 3.74 percent to 5.95 percent as of April 12, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Forbearance and Call Volume survey released Monday. That amounts to roughly 3 million mortgages. Before the pandemic took hold of the economy, about 0.25 percent of mortgages were in forbearance. “With over 22 million Americans filing for unemployment over the past month, homeowners are contacting their mortgage servicers seeking relief, leading to a sharp increase in the share of loans in forbearance across all loan…
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria said on April 1 he expected 300,000 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans – or 1 percent of their mortgages – to go into forbearance in April. Less than three weeks later, he’s way, way off. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that 4.64 percent of Fannie and Freddie loans were in forbearance as of April 12. And an analysis by financial technology firm Black Knight found that there were nearly 1.4 million Fannie and Freddie loans in forbearance as of Friday, April 19 – representing 4.9 percent of their mortgages. Calabria made his original prediction of 300,000 on CNBC on April 1, prefacing them by saying they were very preliminary and may change: …
