The Obama Administration's Monthly Housing Scorecard for April was released this afternoon by the Departments of Treasury and Housing and Urban Development. The scorecard contains a wrap-up of housing data released earlier from RealtyTrac, the Census Bureau, S&P Case Shiller, and other sources. All of the data has been previously covered by MND, however a few points bear repeating.
Publishers of major housing indices all report that home prices which have been gradually moving upwards since last summer remained stable through mid-winter. Most indications are that prices are moving ahead of earlier projections.
Sales of new and existing homes have remained relatively flat, probably because of a lack of available inventory. The number of available existing homes is at the lowest point since at least 2003 and records numbers of homes are being held off of the market.
Each month the Scorecard incorporates by reference the monthly report on the Making Home Affordable (MHA) Program and its various components including the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), 2MP second lien modification program, Principal Reduction Alternative Program (PRA) and Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program. This The April MHA report includes data through March 31, 2013.
The HAMP program continues to be serve new borrowers with 20,653 trial modifications initiated since the February report, only about 2,000 fewer than entered the program in March 2011. There are currently 63,219 active trials. Since the beginning of the HAMP program in 2009 just over 2 million borrowers have entered into trial modifications and 1.179 million of those trials have been converted to permanent modifications, 11,913 of them since the February report.
Since February 4,299 loans have started PRA modifications under HAMP and 1,359 outside of HAMP. This brings the totals since the program began to 99,217 and 33,413 respectively. The median principal reduction for a HAMP PRA modification has been $73,384; the median is $56,386 for non-HAMP PRAs.
To data the HAFA program which gives borrowers an opportunity to exit homeownership without going through a foreclosure has completed short sales for 102,901 GSE loans and 34,279 non-GSE loans. Another 3,000 GSE borrowers have given deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure as have a few hundred non-GSE borrowers. Activity in the HAFA program has accelerated since the closing months of 2012 and the GSEs have streamlined their short-sale processes.
MFA reports that permanent HAMP modifications continue to exhibit lower delinquency and re-default rates than industry modifications. After six months in the program more than 94 percent of homeowners remain in permanent modifications and 9.2 percent are 60+ days delinquent. Performance is strongly correlated with payment reduction. At 24 months, modifications with a monthly payment reduction greater than 50 percent have only a 16.7 percent incidence of disqualification after missing three payments. Where the payment had been cut by 20 percent or less the disqualification rate is 42.8 percent.
MFA said it has served 37,624 homeowners through all of its various programs since the February report. The cumulative total for the program is 1,588,020 borrowers.
