June Housing Scorecard Says Housing Market Remains Fragile

July 6, 2011 (Chris Moore)

Housing data through May continues to show that the housing market remains fragile despite an uptick in housing prices and a drop in the number of new homes in foreclosure according to the latest release of the Obama Administration's June Housing Scorecard.

Significant gains have been made in both prime and subprime delinquencies. At the end of May, prime mortgages that were at least 30 days of more late dropped to 4.3%, down from the peak of 6.69 percent seen in 2010.

Performance of subprime mortgages continues to improve as well as 30 days or more delinquencies dropped to 32.5 percent, down from 36.4 percent reported a year earlier.

Seriously delinquent mortgages, those that are more than 90 days delinquent or in foreclosure, also continued to drop. At the end of May, seriously delinquent prime mortgages numbered 1,499,000 compared to 1,925,000 a year earlier and seriously delinquent subprime mortgages numbered 1,744,000 compared to 1,993,000 in May of last year.

Since the beginning of the Homeowner Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) in 2009 until the end of April 2011, nearly 5 million modification arrangements have been started. In May, 32,398 homeowners received a permanent loan modification through HAMP raising the total amount of permanent modifications to 731,451, reducing the mortgage burden by over $6.8 billion.

There were 26,689 new HAMP trial modifications started in May, bringing the total amount of active modifications to 126,751. The rate of modifications moving from trial to permanent is up to 71 percent with the average time to convert from a trial modification to a permanent modification now only taking an average of 3.5 months to accomplish.

“The housing data in this month’s Scorecard paint a mixed picture of the housing market, despite growing evidence of progress in the broader economy,” said HUD Assistant Secretary Raphael Bostic. “Last month we saw a slight uptick in home prices and a continued decline in mortgage defaults as our foreclosure prevention programs reach more borrowers upstream in the process. But we have much more work to do to reach the many households who still face trouble and to help the market recover. That is why this Administration continues to push for effective implementation of our recovery programs as we continue to help homeowners through this crisis.”

Tags: June Housing Scorecard, Obama Administration, loan modification, foreclosure completions, monthly payment reduction, housing prices, mortgage delinquencies, foreclosure starts, foreclosure completions

Source:
Treasury.gov