ONE OF THE largest providers of home mortgage money in the country is about to deploy a new, high-tech early warning tool designed to keep thousands of borrowers who have fallen behind on loan repayments out of foreclosure.
Freddie Mac, the congressionally chartered owner of approximately 7 million home mortgages, has developed an electronic system that spots borrowers who are statistically most likely to end up in foreclosure.
Analyzing 70 to 80 "borrower characteristics" from each loan file, the system flags high-risk consumers very early in the default cycle -- as little as 16 days after the homeowner misses a mortgage payment.
It also identifies delinquent borrowers who have minimal likelihood of going to foreclosure, even if they're more than 30 days late on payments.
The net result, according to the new program's designers: Borrowers who really need urgent attention -- and possibly a temporary or permanent restructuring of their loan terms -- get contacted far earlier than under current industry practices. And borrowers likely to resume timely payments may get no contact at all.
Under current procedures, by contrast, virtually every homeowner who falls behind on a payment gets a standardized phone call, letter or some other communication from their mortgage servicer. Relatively little effort is made to categorize 00 delinquents by risk severity early, and no system attempts to predict delinquency outcomes at the 16-day mark, using behavioral models.
Dubbed "Payment Prospector," Freddie Mac's new program will likely be used by many of the country's largest mortgage lending firms within the coming year, according to officials at the firm. Freddie Mac says it will eventually offer it free, or at nominal cost, to all 2,500 mortgage banks, commercial banks, thrifts and other local lenders with whom it does business across the country.
In an average month, according to Paul T. Peterson, senior vice president of Freddie Mac, borrowers on 170,000 mortgages in Freddie Mac's portfolio are 30 days late on their payments.
The vast majority of these customers bring themselves current within a few weeks. But a noteworthy number of each month's late payers -- about 24,000 over the course of a year -- get so seriously behind that the company has to resort to the drastic option of either taking over the property and selling it via foreclosure, or undertaking some form of "workout," such as a nonforeclosure "short sale" that disposes of the home quickly for a price below the mortgage amount.
