Modification Program Activity Rises in Second Quarter: Treasury

Activity under the Making Home Affordable program increased in the second quarter thanks to the introduction of the Streamline Home Affordable Mortgage Program, according to a performance report from the Treasury Department.

Cumulative activity for the quarter, including HAMP modifications, government-sponsored enterprise standard modifications and other loss mitigation activities, totaled 60,926 versus 57,582 for the previous quarter. To date, nearly 2.7 million modifications and forbearance plans have been started.

The Streamline HAMP program that offers modifications for non-GSE homeowners ushered in 7,811 modifications, making up a large portion of the overall activity. Ocwen Financial Corp. said Friday that it was responsible for 4,112 Streamline HAMP modifications, representing 53% of the total for the quarter.

In total, there were 1.6 million Tier 1 and Tier 2 permanent HAMP modifications, the Treasury reported. Ocwen led all other servicers with nearly 325,000 of these modifications, followed by Wells Fargo and Nationstar Mortgage.

Ocwen was also responsible for the most HAMP Principal Reduction Alternative modifications of any servicer, with more than 104,000, followed by Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.

Altogether seven servicers, including those mentioned above as well as Bank of America, CitiMortgage and Select Portfolio Servicing, made up roughly 85% of non-GSE HAMP modifications in the second quarter.

In the report, the Treasury Department also provided its servicer assessment results. Ocwen, JPMorgan, Select Portfolio Servicing and Wells Fargo were found to need minor improvements. CitiMortgage and Nationstar were reported as needing moderate improvements to their programs.

Bank of America was cited as needing substantial improvements, missing the benchmarks for income calculation errors, timely HAMP evaluation and incentive payment data errors.

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