By Chad Thomas Hagwood, Hunt Real Estate Capital Thanks to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), forbearance is now one of the biggest buzzwords in multifamily finance. When the FHFA announced at the end of March that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would offer mortgage forbearance to multifamily properties facing hardship as a result of COVID-19, many multifamily owners adopted a wait-and-see attitude. That was the right decision. As April went on, the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker steadily trended higher. By May 13, full or partial rent for the month of May was 87.7 percent collected. But with unemployment spiking to record levels, rent collections through the spring and into the summer will most certainly decline at many properties, causing owners to give those forbearance offers a second look. My advice: if there is anything owners can do to avoid forbearance, they should. While tempting, mortgage forbearance should be considered a last resort. Forbearance could take a reputational toll It’s generally implied that entering into a forbearance agreement will not impact a borrower’s ability to secure financing in the future. In an age that obsessively collects and retrieves data of all sorts, experience — and common sense — suggests that …
