Despite servicers' efforts to modify unprecedented volumes of troubled mortgages and a large-scale government-led program put in place to stem the nation's viral foreclosure epidemic, they haven't been enough to keep up with the rapid pace of loan deterioration, according to new data from Lender Processing Services (LPS). An LPS market report released Monday shows that the total number of delinquent loans as of the end of February was 21 percent higher than it was a year earlier, and the foreclosure rate represents a 51 percent year-over-year increase.
With refinancing in the commercial real estate (CRE) sector hard to come by and delinquencies continuing to rise, special servicers of commercial mortgages are dealing with large influxes of new troubled loans. Primary and master servicers ranked by Standard & Poor's reported that delinquent CRE loans hit a new all-time high at the end of 2009. A separate study by the research firm Delta Associates says that the aggregate value of distressed commercial real estate in the U.S. has now surpassed $187 billion.
According to Bank of America's monthly Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) progress report to the Department of Treasury, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank has completed nearly 33,000 permanent HAMP modifications, including more than 12,000 since the previous monthly report. As of April 8, 2010, 32,900 Bank of America customers had been placed into completed mortgage modifications with affordable payments under HAMP, up from 20,666 reported a month earlier. This marked the bank's most productive month to date.
This year has seen a big decline in the number of non-bank mortgage lenders to close down, but the improvement has been offset by a spike in failed financial institutions. From January 1 through April 9, 2010, there have been a total of 55 mortgage-related closings. At about the same point last year, there were 50 closings. The increase traces directly to institutional bank failures, which have doubled compared to a year earlier. Non-bank mortgage operations to close, on the other hand, are two-thirds lower than where they stood at this time last year.
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