Are a ton of foreclosures about to hit the market?

The answer is absolutely not. Let me tell you why:

This is a myth that's happening among a lot of renters. People that don't own homes yet are all waiting for the shoe to drop and a bunch of foreclosures to hit the market. Let me tell you why it's not going to happen:

There is something called forbearance. And a lot of people did tap into it at the beginning of the pandemic. The experts thought that about 30% of mortgage holders would need to tap into it at the beginning of the pandemic. In other words, forbearance is where a lender gives you some level of grace.

They say, "Hey, you can stop making your payments for a while, or you can make a minimum payment or we'll tack on your payments to the end of the loan." There are a lot of different variations to it.

But the government said they want everybody to have a six-month opportunity if they've been struck by COVID or...

So one question that you might be getting occasionally from buyers is "I'm going to wait until we see a lot more foreclosures hitting the market...I know they're coming."

A couple of stats that has been recently reported in thew news is that 12% of mortgages across the country had recently been delinquent. Buyers see the headline and naturally assume we are heading back to a 2009 kind of market cycle where there's going to be a ton of foreclosures.

That's not true. Why? Because this is a completely different market environment. 

The first reason reasons we won't see a massive surge in foreclosures is because of the CARES Act, which was created in response to the COVID pandemic. The CARES Act includes a provision which forces lenders to offer forbearance to people that are in financial trouble. Forbearance allows borrowers to skips payments for a period of time or pay interest only payments. It started with a 180 days and it's now been extended for another 180 days. So a...