Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (GSEs) helped keep nearly 60,000 homeowners in their homes in the first quarter, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report for first quarter 2023.

The GSEs together completed 58,268 foreclosure prevention actions during the first three months of 2023, up 11.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2022.

The results brought the total number of homeowners helped to 6.77 million since the start of FHFA’s conservatorship of the GSEs in September 2008.

FHFA’s report included data on the GSEs’ mortgage performance, delinquencies, and active forbearance plans, as well as forfeiture actions and refinances by state.

The report showed the GSEs completed 15,500 loan modifications in the first quarter, down 6.6 percent from 16,596 in the previous quarter. The report noted that 35 percent of loan modifications completed in the first quarter reduced borrowers’ monthly payments by more than 20 percent.

FHFA reported the rate for loans 60 or more days delinquent decreased slightly from 0.84 percent at the end of the fourth quarter to 0.75 percent at the end of the first quarter.

As mortgage rates rose, the number of refinances decreased to 78,445 in the first quarter from 111,251 in the previous quarter, a decline of nearly 30 percent.

The report also noted that, as of the end of the first quarter, there were 65,757 loans in forbearance, or about 0.21 percent of the GSEs’ single-family conventional book of business, down from 81,173 or 0.26 percent at the end of the fourth quarter. About 3 percent of those loans have been on a forbearance plan for more than 12 months.