AARP Answers: Your Mortgage and the Coronavirus

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I'm worried I might not be able to make my mortgage payment. Will my mortgage company help?

In most cases yes. If the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac) or the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) backs your mortgage — and they do for about 80 percent of

all mortgages — the mortgage giants may waive your payments for up to 12 months. It's called forbearance: You and the lender agree to temporarily reduce or suspend mortgage payments, and the

lender agrees not to foreclose during that time. Both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have also agreed to suspend evictions and foreclosure sales through June 30.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has also imposed an immediate halt to evictions from Federal Housing Administration–insured single-family properties. What's more, it has

halted new foreclosures and suspended those in process. The moratorium on foreclosures also applies to FHA-insured home-equity conversion mortgages (commonly known as reverse mortgages). 

Both moratoriums end June 30.

In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a four-month, nationwide eviction moratorium that would have ended Dec. 31.  The CDC extended that deadline to March

31, and, on March 29, extended the deadline again until June 30. According to the Census Bureau, 9.6 percent of the population age 55 and above had no confidence in their ability to pay

their next month’s rent. The extension also provides criminal penalties for violation of the CDC order by a person of up to $250,000 or one year in jail, or both; and of up to $500,000 for a

violation by an organization. These penalties are new. In a letter to the CDC, AARP senior vice president Bill Sweeney urged the CDC to extend the moratorium beyond its current deadline,

and to make the moratorium to be automatic and universal, rather than depending on tenants to make the first move.