Mortgage lending measures to keep homeowners out of foreclosure have slipped, according to the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group — a group of state attorneys general and state banking regulators working to prevent home foreclosures. “Too many homeowners are trying to avoid foreclosure without receiving any meaningful assistance by their home loan servicer,” the report concluded, “a reality that is growing worse rather than better, as the number of delinquent mortgage loans, prime and sub-prime, increases.”

The Working Group issued its third “Analysis of Subprime Mortgage Servicing Performance,” based on data collected from subprime mortgage servicers.  The recent foreclosure report said nearly 8 out of 10 homeowners that are delinquent on their mortgage payment are not on track for any loan modification or loss mitigation solution that would help them to avoid foreclosure, a higher percentage than this company found in its April report.

The Working Group’s third report concluded:  “While some progress has been made in preventing foreclosures, the empirical evidence is profoundly disappointing.” “Servicers appear to have reached the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of non-prime loans facing interest rate hikes, while not developing effective approaches to address the bulk of sub-prime mortgages which are in default before interest rate resets,” the report said.  “Based on the rising number of delinquent mortgage loans from borrowers with good credit and projected numbers of payment option ARM loans facing reset over the next two years, we fear that continued reactive approaches will lead to another wave of unnecessary and preventable foreclosures.”

The report says “the number of mortgage loans on track for a loan modification has dropped precipitously” in recent months. “The mortgage industry’s failure to develop a more pragmatic approach to stop foreclosures has only increased  property values to decline even further with more anticipated losses on home loan portfolios,” according to the state officials’ new report.

More and more mortgage lenders are presenting loan modification options to their customers rather than taking on more properties that are worth far less than what they appear to be valued at on paper.  “We are troubled that more homeowners are not receiving enough helpful assistance to stop preventable foreclosures,” said Iowa Attorney General, Tom Miller, a founder and leader of the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group.  “While banks and Wall Street firms continue to report record write-downs of mortgage loan portfolios and securities, the losses do not appear to be flowing down to the majority homeowners in the form of affordable loan modifications.”  The result has been record levels of unnecessary home loan defaults that have accelerated declines in property values that have affected all of us.”  

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