The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recently released a report indicating an increase in the percentage of first-lien mortgages in the last year, accompanied by a recent increase in foreclosures.
The “OCC Mortgage Metrics Report, First Quarter 2017” was generated from data from seven large national banks as of March 31, representing 35 percent of all outstanding residential mortgages. Those mortgages account for approximately 19.5 million loans, totaling $3.42 trillion in principal balances, the report states.
The share of current and performing first-lien mortgages rose to 95.6 percent for the first quarter of 2017, according to the report. This is up from 94.9 percent for the first quarter of 2016.
An increase in foreclosure activity also occurred since the fourth quarter of 2016, the report showed.
“This is the first quarter-over-quarter increase in two years,” the OCC said in a press release. “Reporting servicers initiated 47,546 new foreclosures during the first quarter of 2017, a 4.5 percent increase from the previous quarter but a decrease of 19.3 percent from a year earlier. Servicers implemented 35,137 mortgage modifications in the first quarter of 2017. Eighty-eight percent of the modifications reduced borrowers’ monthly payments.”
Despite the foreclosure uptick, the report indicated that delinquencies reached a two-year low, and the percentage of mortgages considered to be seriously delinquent fell from 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 1.9 percent in the first quarter of 2017. Meanwhile, the percentage of loans that were 30-59 days delinquent fell from 2.3 percent to 1.8 percent during that time period.