Even though the real estate housing market is thriving, high unemployment due to the covid pandemic means millions of Americans are struggling to make mortgage payments.

Will Covid Cause a Foreclosure Crisis?

More than two million homeowners remain ninety days or more past due on paying their mortgages and not in foreclosure. Homeowners with distressed finances have been relieved under the foreclosure and eviction protection policies under the CARES act.

Struggling mortgage borrowers are now in a better place than how things were at the pandemic, thanks to the current home prices approach that has brought astonishing high home equity levels. According to mortgage data and analytics experts, the number of active mortgage forbearance plans that allowed borrowers to delay their monthly mortgage payments dropped by more than five percent from the previous week. This drop is explained by the expiration of the forbearance period in August. At entry into the programs, borrowers were given up to 18 months of forbearances; hence the expirations are starting to roll in. The following few months are expected to see a larger number of expirations.

Still, about 1.6 million borrowers are in the forbearance program, down from over five million in May 2020. This stands for about three percent of the total outstanding mortgages. However, ninety-eight percent of these troubled borrowers have a minimum of 10% equity in their homes without counting their missed payments. About 90% of the borrowers still have about ten percent equity when the missed payments are included. In today’s real estate market, most of these people can easily sell their houses and get some profit.

Such strong data on percentage equity offers a strong incentive for borrowers to go back to making mortgage payments even if they need it reduced via modification. The tappable equity went up by $ trillion in the second 2021 quarter. This refers to the number of money homeowners with mortgages can take out of their homes. This has been attributed to the fast rise in home prices during the covid pandemic.

After swearing in as the president of the US, Joe Biden inherited an administration with lots of problems resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. One of his top priorities was ensuring that more than 2 million homeowners behind in paying their mortgage don’t lose their homes, spurring a massive housing foreclosure crisis.

Biden’s administration has prolonged the homeowner’s protection policies enacted in the wake of the pandemic and is looking to extend them further. Once the policies end, there will be an upsurge in foreclosures, but how much will depend on the duration. As was expected, the foreclosure activity will increase as the foreclosure moratorium of the government expires. Still, it does not mean we expect overflooding of distressed properties getting into the real estate market. However, after these protections run out, the more significant fear is that the 2008 financial crisis might repeat itself.

But it’s apparent that for people that are still in trouble of foreclosure, the future is not as dreary as it was originally thought. There is also a high likelihood that the foreclosures crisis will remain below the standard levels through the end of the year. If you want to sell your house for cash in Atlanta regardless of your mortgage debt, check out Atlanta House Buyers.

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