OCC Reports Mortgage Performance Unchanged

On Thursday, March 15, 2018, the OCC issued a press release stating that performance of first-lien mortgages remained largely unchanged during the fourth quarter of 2017 compared with a year earlier, according to the OCC’s quarterly report on mortgages.

Highlights from the report are:

  • 94.5 percent of mortgages included in the report were current and performing at the end of the quarter, compared to 94.7 percent a year earlier.
  • Foreclosure activity has increased from the previous quarter. Reporting servicers initiated 34,519 new foreclosures during the fourth quarter of 2017, a 0.7 percent increase from the previous quarter and a 24.1 percent decrease from a year earlier. Servicers implemented 21,866 mortgage modifications in the fourth quarter of 2017. Seventy-nine percent of the modifications reduced borrowers’ monthly payments.
  • The first-lien mortgages included in the OCC’s quarterly report comprise 33 percent of all residential mortgages outstanding in the United States or approximately 18.1 million loans totaling $3.32 trillion in principal balances.