LOS ANGELES - Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender, said Tuesday it will begin calling borrowers to offer refinancing or modifications on $16 billion in loans with interest rates set to adjust by the end of 2008.
But as defaults and foreclosures snowball, the mortgage industry is under increasing pressure to do even more to help financially strapped borrowers hang on to their homes.
"People are talking about it, saying it might be necessary, but there's not a lot of it going on," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an independent trade publication.
Countrywide said it would discuss possible loan changes with borrowers who are current on loans but face pending interest rate resets. The lender said it intends to refinance about $10 billion in loans and modify another $4 billion.
It also plans to contact holders of loans totaling some $2.2 billion who are late on their loans and struggling because of recent rate resets.
Countrywide said it has already helped more than 40,000 borrowers and would reach out to 82,000 more to provide some kind of relief.
The Mortgage Bankers Association is surveying its members to determine how many mortgages have been modified in recent months.
Moody's Investors Service recently surveyed 16 mortgage servicers that accounted for 80 percent of the market for subprime loans made to borrowers with shaky credit histories.
It found that most of those companies had modified only about 1 percent of loans with interest rates that reset in the first half of this year.
The bankers association said the survey was flawed because it didn't include other ways that borrowers are being helped, including temporary reductions of monthly payments or spreading delinquent amounts over future payments.
"It is important to understand that the [loan] modification is only one means of helping a borrower who is behind on their payments," said Steve O'Connor, the association's senior vice president.
So far this year, Calabasas, Calif.-based Countrywide said it has completed about 20,000 loan modifications - a figure that represents less than 5 percent of the more than 500,000 loans the lender reports were behind in payments as of last month.
The figure amounts to about 24 percent of the roughly 82,000 loans the company said were in foreclosure.
Countrywide said the statistics can be misleading.
"The number is not small when you sort down to the people who are seriously in trouble." said Steve Bailey, CEO of loan administration at Countrywide, which has 8.9 million loans valued at $1.45 trillion.
Business, Pages 29 on 10/24/2007