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Following President Joe Biden's directive to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other federal departments to provide protections to homeowners and renters amid the coronavirus pandemic, HUD announced it is extending the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) foreclosure and eviction moratoriums and the initial start date of a COVID-19 forbearance through June 30, 2021.

HUD's foreclosure and eviction moratoriums applies to all homeowners with an FHA-insured forward or Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) loan, and homeowners with a Section 184 or Section 184A mortgage loan, except for properties that are legally vacant or abandoned. In its release, HUD highlighted that it prohibits servicers from initiating or proceeding with foreclosure and foreclosure-related eviction actions during the moratoriums. HUD also extended the deadlines for the first legal action and reasonable diligence timeframes for servicers to 180 days from the date of expiration of the foreclosure and eviction moratorium.

Related to forbearance, for all FHA-insured forward mortgages, HUD:

• extended the timeframe for homeowners to request the start of a COVID-19 forbearance from their mortgage servicer through June 30, 2021, providing homeowners with additional time to request a forbearance from their mortgage servicer;
• expanded the COVID-19 forbearance to allow up to two forbearance extensions of up to three months each for homeowners who requested a COVID-19 Forbearance on or before June 30, 2020, in order to provide relief to homeowners in this situation who will be nearing the end of their maximum 12-month forbearance period and have not yet stabilized their financial situation; and
• expanded the use of FHA’s streamlined COVID-19 loss mitigation home retention and home disposition options to all homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments by at least 90 days, which will require mortgage servicers to assess more homeowners for a streamlined waterfall of loss mitigation home retention options, starting with FHA’s COVID-19 Standalone Partial Claim.

Biden's directive noted that, with last week's action by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to extend the government-sponsored enterprises' (GSEs) forbearance policy, "these coordinated actions will cover 70 percent of existing single-family home mortgages." The FHFA also extended its moratorium on foreclosures and evictions for GSE-backed single-family mortgages and GSE-owned properties to March 31, 2021.

HUD last week also issued a memorandum related to Fair Housing Act enforcement, stating that the law protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity consistent with a recent Supreme Court decision related to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity will review complaints received since Jan. 20, 2021, to determine if they are related to this type of discrimination and require further investigation.

NAFCU will continue to monitor the housing finance landscape and keep credit unions informed of policy changes.