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Monday, October 15, 2012

Correction on Mortgage Modifications

by Calculated Risk on 10/15/2012 01:48:00 PM

On Sunday, I wrote that private modifications were performing better than HAMP. According to the Q2 OCC report, HAMP modifications have a lower redefault rate than private mods:

HAMP modifications perform better than other modifications. Of the 565,751 HAMP modifications implemented since the third quarter of 2009, 68.2 percent remained current, compared with 53.4 percent of other modifications implemented during the same period.
...
Servicers modified 2,543,133 mortgages from the beginning of 2008 through the end of the fourth quarter of 2011. At the end of the first quarter of 2012, 50.7 percent of these modifications remained current or were paid off. Another 7.1 percent were 30 to 59 days delinquent, and 15.1 percent were seriously delinquent. Almost 11 percent were in the process of foreclosure, and 6.3 percent had completed the foreclosure process. More recent modifications that emphasized reduced payments, affordability and sustainability have outperformed modifications implemented in earlier periods.
The OCC report covers about "60% of all first-lien mortgages in the United States" whereas the Hope Now report I mentioned on Sunday includes data from the non-bank servicers (not included in the OCC report) and is scaled to cover the entire first lien market. I'll have more on modifications soon (Mark Hanson called modifications the "new subprime").

Also, as a followup to a question in the comments, here is a "heat map" from Zillow on where properties owners have negative equity. Note: you can zoom in on the map, and put the cursor over an area - it will show the distribution of equity.