With affordability a top concern among prospective home buyers, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) facilitated access to mortgage credit for more than 793,000 home buyers and homeowners in 2024, according to FHA’s annual report to Congress.
The report describes the work of the FHA Single- Family mortgage insurance programs and the performance of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund (MMI) in fiscal year 2024.
In the last four fiscal years under the Biden-Harris Administration, FHA has helped facilitate mortgage financing or refinancing for more than 3.9 million individuals and families through its forward mortgage insurance programs.
The efforts by FHA in fiscal year 2024 included assisting more than 26,000 seniors obtain a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM). In addition, FHA provided “a highly effective set of tools” to help borrowers still recovering from the effects of the pandemic, borrowers impacted by natural disasters, and individuals facing other financing hardships to remain in their homes.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, we have expanded access to homeownership,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency head Adrianne Todman said. “Despite high housing costs and a challenging market, we made historic reforms to help hundreds of thousands of Americans buy and keep a home.”
As of Sept. 30, the MMI Fund’s capital ration was 11.47%, a 0.96% increase from fiscal year 2023. This represents an increase in total capital in MMI Fund of $27.5 billion, helping the fund rise to $172.8 billion.
“Through our work, we have demonstrated that FHA can facilitate homeownership and wealth-building opportunities for hundreds of thousands of households and provide support for homeowners facing hardships while maintaining a financially sound Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund,” said Federal Housing Commissioner Julia Gordon.
According to the report, FHA’s serious delinquency rate—the percentage of mortgages in its portfolio that are 90 or more days delinquent—was 4.15% as of Sept. 30, consistent with rates prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 82% of FHA purchase mortgage insurance endorsements in fiscal year 2024 went to first-time home buyers, the same share as fiscal year 2023. Over the past four years, approximately 2.3 million borrowers with FHA-insured home purchase mortgages were first-time home buyers, representing eight out of every 10 FHA borrowers.
The share of FHA’s total endorsements that went to borrowers of color significantly exceeded that of other market participants, according to the report. According to data made available from calendar year 2023, the percentage of FHA’s volume of mortgages made to Black borrower was almost two and a half times the rate of the rest of the market; for Hispanic borrowers, it was almost double that rate.
