Mortgage – HousingWire

Forbearance re-entries making life difficult for servicers
2021 Rising Star Matt Jones: Reshaping the mortgage industry
HousingWire Magazine: June 2021

Forbearance re-entries making life difficult for servicers

Posted: 01 Jun 2021 01:10 PM PDT

Servicers’ forbearance portfolio volumes managed to drop one basis point last week to 4.18%, the 13th consecutive week of declines. However, some unfortunate trends are beginning to crystalize.

Despite declines for nearly every investor type, last week’s positive numbers were offset by an 11 basis point jump in forbearance share for portfolio loans and private label securities, according to the latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

On top of that, forbearance re-entries increased to almost 5.6%, as more homeowners who previously canceled their mortgage postponement plans sought assistance once again.

Of the cumulative exits for the period from June 1, 2020, through May 23, 2021, exits performed almost exactly as they had the week prior. Over 27% of exits resulted in a loan deferral/partial claim while nearly 25% represented borrowers who continued to make their monthly payments during their forbearance period ― though this number has continued to slowly drop for months now.

About two-thirds of homeowners who signed up for some type of mortgage forbearance during the Covid-19 pandemic have exited the programs.

Increasing Lending and Servicing Capacity – Regardless of Rates

The low-rate environment won't last forever, and both lenders and servicers need to be able to keep their costs down while managing volume fluctuations once things start to normalize.

Presented by: Sutherland

A May study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that, of the over 2 million borrowers still in forbearance in March, 1.2 million entered forbearance in June 2020 or earlier. The Federal Reserve also noted that FHA borrowers were considerably more likely to take up mortgage postponement initially, and have remained in the program longer.

The most likely reason being FHA borrowers are more commonly first-time homebuyers and more likely to live in low-income areas.

“With this context, it's perhaps not surprising to find that rates rose most, and were most persistent, in lower average income zip codes,” said the Fed. “Forbearance rates in the poorest quartile of zip codes approached 10 percent in May and June 2020 and remain above 5.5 percent at the end of March 2021.”

The post Forbearance re-entries making life difficult for servicers appeared first on HousingWire.

2021 Rising Star Matt Jones: Reshaping the mortgage industry

Posted: 01 Jun 2021 12:16 PM PDT

2021 HousingWire Rising Star Matt Jones, pictured above, is portrayed on the cover of the June HousingWire Magazine issue. He formerly served as senior counsel for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and currently, he serves as senior counsel for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

Going into 2020, Matt Jones thought it was going to be a relatively slow year legislatively. It was an election year, and typically, everyone turns to politics and campaigning instead of legislation.

"Boy was I wrong," Jones said, who served as senior counsel for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs at the time.

"It turned into, by far, the most consequential year of the four that I spent on the Hill," he said. As the reports on the coronavirus started to come out in January and February of last year, it didn't take long for the questions to start flooding in on how Congress would respond.

And for housing in particular, some of the biggest questions that Jones recalls were, "What happens to the people who can't pay their rent or mortgage?" and "How are mortgage servicer’s who collect the monthly payments and advance them to investors going to stay in business when they're suddenly not collecting payments?"

Those were massive, economy-wide problems that needed to be immediately addressed, he said.

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The post 2021 Rising Star Matt Jones: Reshaping the mortgage industry appeared first on HousingWire.

HousingWire Magazine: June 2021

Posted: 31 May 2021 09:01 PM PDT

This issue marks my first issue overseeing the magazine with a cover photoshoot, and wow, Matt Jones, who is portrayed on the cover, really set the bar high when it comes to what it means to be a Rising Star. He formerly served as senior counsel for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and currently, he serves as senior counsel for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. His list of accomplishments includes being the principal drafter of the mortgage forbearance program enacted through the CARES Act, which reshaped the mortgage industry and enabled more than 4 million homeowners to hit the pause button on their mortgage.

But it's not simply his monumental role in creating housing relief during the COVID-19 pandemic that makes him a Rising Star, it's also everything he did leading up to that moment that truly makes him an exemplary young influencer in the housing sector. It's this same willpower, steadfastness and determination to push through adversity that defines this year's winners.

From leading their team through a massive refinance boom and quickly developing new technology to meet the unique needs of 2021 to driving the adoption of eClosings and delivering relevant training to lenders and agents on how to navigate the pandemic, we're excited to present this year's class of Rising Stars.