What is mortgage forbearance?
Mortgage forbearance is an agreement with your mortgage company to pause or reduce your payments for a set time while you get through a hardship. The missed amount remains due: you pay it back later, on terms the agreement sets.
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Where you’ll see the word
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A hardship letter
Your letter to the mortgage company saying what happened and asking for a pause or a lower payment.
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Your monthly statement
The amount due shown on a monthly statement during the plan: either the temporary plan payment or the amount due under the loan contract.
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A plan end notice
The letter that says the pause is ending, when the next regular payment is due and how the skipped payments get repaid.
What mortgage forbearance means for you
A pause builds up a bill. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes three ways to repay it: all at once when payments restart, spread across higher monthly payments for a while, or added to the end of the loan. Which one you get depends on the loan and servicer.
Property taxes and insurance don't pause. If your loan has an escrow account, the CFPB says the servicer should keep paying them during the plan.
How did forbearance actions compare in July 2026?
The Federal Housing Finance Agency reports monthly counts for new forbearance plans, permanent loan modifications and payment deferrals.
New forbearance plans outnumbered loan modifications in July 2026
Monthly actions for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans.
FHFA reports payment deferrals after a forbearance plan ends; it does not tie them or the modifications to the 9,798 plans newly started in July 2026. Read the July 2026 report.
Questions about forbearance
What happens when mortgage forbearance ends?
Regular payments start again, and the skipped amount comes due under the repayment terms your plan set.
Does interest stop during forbearance?
The CFPB says interest on the paused amounts could continue to add up until you repay them.
Can a natural disaster be a reason for forbearance?
Yes. The CFPB's examples of when forbearance can help are a home damaged in a natural disaster, unexpected medical costs and losing a job.
Free help understanding your options
Housing counselors approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development work at nonprofit agencies. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes free foreclosure-avoidance counseling, including help with mortgage-company conversations and available options Source CFPB.
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HUD-approved housing counselors
Our help directory lists 1,010 agencies approved for foreclosure counseling, by state.
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Legal aid
Nonprofit law offices give free civil legal help to people with low incomes. Our help directory lists the 120 offices the Legal Services Corporation funds.
Our pages that use it
- Mortgage forbearance guide →How to ask for a pause, and what happens when it ends.
- Loan modification guide →A permanent change to your loan's terms, a different route from a pause.
Related terms
- Loan ModificationA permanent change to your mortgage's terms, such as the interest rate or the length of the loan, agreed with your mortgage company.
- Repayment PlanAn agreement with your servicer to pay back missed payments over time by adding extra to each monthly payment until you're caught up.
- Partial ClaimAn FHA loss mitigation option that places approved past-due amounts in a separate HUD subordinate lien.
- Loss MitigationA servicer's review of available alternatives to foreclosure, such as repayment, forbearance, modification, or a short sale.
Sources and method
The card and chart use the Federal Housing Finance Agency's monthly count of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans in forbearance, from its Foreclosure Prevention, Refinance, and Federal Property Manager's Report. Counts print as whole loans; exact values are in the downloadable CSV. The definition and the repayment descriptions come from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pages listed above. The second chart uses monthly initiated forbearance plans and completed permanent modifications and payment deferrals from that report.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau · What is mortgage forbearance? at consumerfinance.gov
- Federal Housing Finance Agency · Foreclosure Prevention, Refinance, and Federal Property Manager's Report, at fhfa.gov
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau · Manage your money during forbearance, at consumerfinance.gov
- Federal Housing Finance Agency · Foreclosure Prevention, Refinance, and Federal Property Manager's Report, July 2026, at fhfa.gov
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, at consumerfinance.gov
We write with assistance from AI tools. Figures come from the data and sources named on this page.