May Housing Scorecard and Q1 Servicer Assessments Released

The Mayrnedition of the Obama administration’s Housing Scorecard released today by thernU.S.  Departments of Housing and Urban Developmentrn(HUD) and Treasury showed a promise of growing stability in the housing marketrnalthough officials cautioned that the overall outlook remains mixed.</p

The monthlyrnscorecard is essentially a summary of data on housing and housing financernreleased by public and private sources over the previous month and/orrnquarter.  Most of the data such as newrnand existing home sales, permits and starts, mortgage originations, and variousrnhouse price analyses have previously been covered by MND.</p

This month’srnscorecard is more upbeat than many of its recent predecessors.  It notes that sales of existing houses rosern2.4 percent in April and that the inventories of newly constructed housesrnincreased for the first time since April 2007. rnWith sales up inventories dropped to a 5.1 month supply compared to 5.2rnmonths in March and 12.2 months at the peak in January 2009. Distressed salesrnare still a big factor and serious delinquencies and underwater mortgagesrncontinue to hold back the market.</p

HUD Acting Assistant Secretary ErikarnPoethig said, “This month’s indicators show promise – more than 180,000rnborrowers took advantage of our enhanced Home Affordable Refinance Program inrnthe last quarter alone and foreclosure starts are declining as more homeownersrnsecure mortgage relief  – but with so many households still struggling tornmake ends meet it’s clear that we have more work ahead.  That is why we are asking the Congress tornapprove the President’s refinancing proposal so that more homeowners canrnreceive assistance.”</p

The May Housing Scorecard and the accompanyingrndata from the Making Home Affordable Program (HAMP) include the results ofrnfirst quarter program assessments of participating servicers.  These Servicer Assessments summarizernperformance in three categories of program implementation; identifying andrncontacting homeowners; evaluating homeowners for assistance, and programrnreporting, management, and governance.</p

In the first quarter of 2012 onlyrnthree servicers were found to need minor improvement and six in need ofrnmoderate improvement.  For the secondrnconsecutive quarter, none was found to be in need of substantial enough improvementrnto cause for Treasury to withhold program incentives as has been done in thernpast. </p

Release of the first quarterrnassessments coincides with the roll-out of the expanded eligibility criteriarnfor HAMP.  The new HAMP Tier IIrnguidelines include eligibility for homeowners with a debt-to-income ratio belowrn31 percent, properties occupied by a tenant, and vacant properties which thernborrower intends to rent.  Servicers began accepting applications for Tierrn2 on June 1.  </p

The HAMP program received 122,872rnrequests for modifications during April and processed 84,394.  A total of 65,949 requests were denied andrn18,445 were approved.  This brings thernnumber of requests for modifications since the inception of the program to 4.7rnmillion, 2.03 million of which were approved. rn</p

These HAMP statistics for May were alsornbroken down on a per-servicer basis as were program-to-date numbers.  These can be seen in their entirety here.

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