Mortgage Lenders Continue to Stall Foreclosure Activities

Many homeowners who are in pending foreclosure could still sigh relief although temporarily. Major home loan lenders GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Bank of America continue to observe suspension of a huge portion of their overall foreclosure activities. This is still in line with numerous allegations filed before courts in September by borrowers who claim their foreclosures were improperly handled by the banks.

GMAC admits that its foreclosure activities have significantly slowed down because of the ‘documents mess’ allegations. However, the lender said it has started the review of thousands of its foreclosure cases. The company said it is moving ahead slowly but surely.

JPMorgan Chase last week announced plans to restart its pending foreclosure processes by the end of November. The mortgage provider said it has halted up to 127,000 foreclosure proceedings across 40 states. It added that it expects to go back to its normal speed of processing in less than four months.

For its part, Bank of America has begun resubmission of some of 102,000 pending affidavits across 23 states that are related to foreclosure. It expects the process to be completed in just several weeks. The company said it is still halting foreclosures in 27 states, where court approvals are still not required for the review of such cases.

Mortgage lenders have seized about 909,000 properties from January to October of this year, despite the delays brought about by the foreclosure freeze. They are set to repossess more than a million homes in the entire year. It is expected that such banks would strive harder to go on with their respective foreclosure activities sooner.

Analysts cite several factors for the continuous increase in foreclosures nationwide. Those include major economic woes like higher unemployment rate and lower income. They also added that consumers find it harder today to get approvals for new loans or even refinance facilities, because most lenders have further tightened their respective restrictions for borrowing applications.

The temporary halt in foreclosure activities somehow slowed down the rate of foreclosure. Consequently, the number of repossessed homes sharply declined in September. The trend is most evidently noted in typical foreclosure hotbeds like the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Illinois. The temporary freeze was not enough to significantly trim the volume of foreclosure activities in Florida, where foreclosed homes continued to increase in the month.

Check out ForeclosureDataBank.com for additional information about foreclosures.