Ginnie Mae

Surging unemployment from COVID-19 shutdowns brought a rapidly rising tide of forbearance requests, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Federal backing for firms facing a deluge of missed mortgage payments is still on the table despite recent comments by an official who questioned the need to help the industry.

The volume of COVID-19 forbearance requests has risen rapidly as operational processing has improved and hold times have contracted, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

At issue is whether the U.S. should step in now to save nonbank mortgage servicers to head off damage to the housing market.

FHFA head Mark Calabria and his FSOC counterparts need to sit down with the Treasury and fashion an emergency capital plan for the GSEs.

Tenants have threatened to suspend payments during the pandemic to pressure officials into providing rental assistance, but the effects on multifamily loans would compound concerns about servicers' liquidity and, ultimately, lenders' performance.

Ginnie Mae will begin taking requests for assistance from issuers who, having exhausted all other options, are having trouble advancing borrowers' principal-and-interest payments to investors amid the pandemic.

If rising flood waters were the right analogy last time around, this time a tsunami is probably a more accurate description of the wave of delinquencies about to come.

Mark Calabria needs to be working to secure a Fed facility for servicer advances and to support, not denigrate, smaller servicers, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

The share of borrowers seeking payment relief rose more than tenfold as COVID-19 concerns grew and authorities encouraged the practice, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.