For immediate release: January 4, 2021
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has released the Mortgage Analytics and Performance Dashboard (MAPD), which provides maps and graphs of mortgage forbearance and delinquency rates across the country.
The interactive mapping tool allows users to display forbearance rates and delinquency rates at national, state, county, and ZIP code levels. Among other uses, the tool will help inform nonprofits and policymakers at all levels about where mortgage forbearance is being used by households in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
MAPD, created by the Atlanta Fed's Center for Housing and Policy, uses the Equifax Credit Risks Insight Servicing dataset and Black Knight McDash data to estimate forbearance and delinquency rates with a lag of three to four months. The tool will be updated monthly.
"With such unique geographic detail, MAPD allows users to really drill down on a specific area and learn about the degree to which homeowners have received this kind of assistance," said Daniel Sexton, a quantitative research analysis specialist in the Atlanta Fed's Research Department, who developed the tool. "While it’s important to understand the large-scale financial impact of the use of forbearance, this tool provides a better understanding of where the needs are the greatest in our communities."
Forbearance policies went into place in mid-March as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold and businesses were shuttered for public health reasons, resulting in rising unemployment. About 2.75 million mortgages (5.2 percent) remained in active forbearance as of December 2020, according to Black Knight.
"As one might expect and as our MAPD tool shows, the uptake of mortgage forbearance has been fairly uneven across the United States since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic," said Jessica Dill, director of the Center for Housing and Policy at the Atlanta Fed. "Policymakers and nonprofit intermediaries working to assist affected households will now be able to use the MAPD to have clearer sightlines into existing and emerging pockets of distress to better target support."
MAPD is available in the Data and Tools section of the Atlanta Fed website.