A report that includes data on 22% of all residential mortgage debt outstanding – 12 million loans totaling $2.7 trillion in principal balances – in the U.S. shows that the performance of first-lien mortgages declined slightly, or 0.1%, from the third to the fourth quarters of 2022.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said its Mortgage Metrics Report for fourth-quarter 2022 showed that 97.1% of the mortgages reported on were current and performing at the end of the quarter, compared with 97.2% in the third quarter. The agency report shows that despite that small drop, fourth-quarter performance was up 0.7% (from 96.4%) from the same period the year before.
Also:
- Of the mortgages covered in the report, 1.3% were “seriously delinquent” – including those 60 or more days past due and all mortgages held by bankrupt borrowers whose payments are 30 or more days past due. This figure was unchanged from the third quarter of 2022 but down 1% (from 2.3%) from fourth-quarter 2021.
- Servicers initiated 9,166 new foreclosures in the fourth quarter, down from the previous quarter but a higher volume than a year earlier, the agency said. The OCC said the new foreclosure volume in fourth-quarter 2022 is lower than pre-COVID-19 pandemic foreclosure volumes.
- Servicer modifications declined 29.3% from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, with 11,419 modifications completed in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared with 16,160 in the third.
- Of the 11,419 modifications completed during the quarter, 7,303, or 64%, reduced the loan’s pre-modification monthly payment, and 9,597 or 84%, were “combination modifications”—modifications that included multiple actions affecting the affordability and sustainability of the loan, such as an interest rate reduction and a term extension.