Gses Prevented 60k Foreclosures In Q1 2025

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped to prevent 60,592 foreclosures through various actions in the first quarter of 2025. Since being placed under federal conservatorship in September 2008, they’ve completed more than 7.1 million foreclosure prevention actions.

That’s according to the newest Foreclosure Prevention, Refinance and Federal Property Manager’s Report released Thursday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

Of these actions, about 6.45 million have helped homeowners stay in their homes. That figure includes more than 2.76 million permanent loan modifications.

Regarding foreclosure actions, the report found that newly initiated forbearance plans dropped to 31,010 in Q1 2025, down significantly from 46,902 in Q4 2024. By the end of March, the total number of loans in forbearance was 40,939, which represents about 0.13% of all loans serviced by Fannie and Freddie, or 8% of all delinquent loans.

In terms of alternative foreclosure options, 194 short sales and deed-in-lieu actions were completed during Q1 2025 — a 14% increase from Q4 2024. Since 2008, there have been 705,774 such cases.

The report also showcased the performance and health of mortgages in the government-sponsored enterprises’ (GSEs) portfolios.

The percentage of loans that were 60 or more days delinquent dropped from 0.83% to 0.77% between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. During the same period, the serious delinquency rate (90 days or more past due, plus those in foreclosure) remained at 0.57%.

According to the FHFA, the serious delinquency rate for conventional loans purchased by the GSEs compared favorably to those from the Federal Housing Administration (3.98%), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (2.51%) and the industrywide average (1.63%).

Florida had the highest number of seriously delinquent loans among all states at the end of March, followed by California and Texas.

Foreclosure starts increased by 4.9% to 21,972 in the first quarter, while third-party and foreclosure sales rose by 6.3% to 3,081.

The report also noted that refinance activity dropped in early 2025 due to elevated mortgage rates. But by March, the average 30-year fixed rate of 6.65% was down slightly compared to December 2024 (6.72%).

Cash-out loans increased from 56% of all refis in December 2024 to 64% in March 2025 as average mortgage rates declined but remained above the September 2024 low point of 6.18%.