Seven national banks initiated 34,519 new foreclosures in the fourth quarter of 2017, a 24.1% year-over-year decrease, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reported.
Home forfeiture actions, meanwhile, fell 28.9% to 18,353 over the same period. That includes completed foreclosure sales, short sales and deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure actions.
The regulator's quarterly report on mortgage metrics uses data on first-lien residential mortgages serviced by units of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co. — national banks with large mortgage-servicing portfolios. At the end of 2017, they serviced approximately 18.1 million first-lien mortgage loans, with $3.32 trillion in unpaid principal balances.
Of those mortgages, 94.5% were current and performing by the end of 2017's fourth quarter, compared with the year-ago level of 94.7%.
