American Bar Association’s Business Law Today- June 2022

On June 27, 2022, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its First Quarter 2022 Mortgage Metrics Report on the status of first-lien home mortgages held by seven national banks with large servicing portfolios. This quarter, the reporting banks serviced approximately 12.2 million first-lien residential mortgages, with an unpaid principal balance of $2.6T, representing 22% of all outstanding residential mortgage debt.

The OCC reported that mortgage performance continued to improve. 96.9% of all mortgages were current and performing, an increase from 94.2% the year earlier. Seriously delinquent mortgages—those sixty or more days past due, or thirty or more days past due for borrowers in bankruptcy—declined to 1.8% from 2.3% in the prior quarter and 4.6% a year earlier. The servicers modified 42,427 mortgages, a 10.7% decline from the prior quarter, with most modifications reducing the borrowers’ payments by reducing the interest rate or increasing the loan term. Finally, servicers reported an increase in beginning foreclosure activity, to pre-pandemic levels, and an increase in home forfeiture completions, foreclosures, short sales, and deeds-in-lieu, to 2,410, a 26.8% increase from a year earlier.

Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association’s Business Law Today June Month-In-Brief: Business Regulation & Regulated Industries.