their mortgage payments, according to Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest data. And about 1.8 million families are not in forbearance, but are already at least 90 days delinquent on paying their mortgages as of April, according to the latest data from Black Knight, which monitors mortgage data.
For now, many are protected from eviction through a foreclosure moratorium on federally backed loans.
But those protections are running short on time. President Joe Biden extended the federal foreclosure moratorium earlier this year, but that will expire on June 30, 2021. Many of the forbearance programs on federally backed loans are set to lapse this fall.
In a hearing Wednesday, Senators asked the CEOs of several major banks about what they plan to do to help Americans caught in this situation. Here’s what the heads of Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo said.
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo plans to extend foreclosure protections beyond the current federal moratorium. “For the loans that we own, we have extended our moratoriums for foreclosures and evictions until the end of the year,” CEO Charles Scharf said at the hearing Wednesday.
When CNBC Make It followed up with the bank, a spokesperson for Wells Fargo reiterated that except in very specific cases, the bank has stopped all foreclosure-related activity on occupied properties through the end of 2021 and has halted all evictions through the end of the year.
Additionally, Wells Fargo supports the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed rule that would prevent lenders from starting foreclosure proceedings until 2022. “We support the CFPB’s efforts to make this apply for the whole industry, but we are not waiting for them to make this decision where we service mortgages for ourselves,” the spokesperson said.
