Separate from that group, Kelly said, Chase is proceeding to deal with an additional 80,000 borrowers in default whose foreclosure process had been voluntarily halted by the lender starting late last year.
Bank of America, the nation's largest servicer of home mortgages, also did not release the volume of likely foreclosures. The bank said it had extended offers to modify loans to more than 45,000 borrowers under the Obama plan. Bank of America spokesman Dan Frahm said the company was projecting a "slow increase" in the number of monthly foreclosures, potentially reaching 30% above previous normal levels.
Much will depend on how quickly lenders can push the process along. It generally takes three months to a year from the time a borrower receives a notice of default to a foreclosure sale, in which case the lender usually takes title to the property.
Government and company reports show that the number of completed foreclosures nationwide slowed sharply late last year and into early this year, largely because of various moratoriums in effect during much of the first quarter.
But anecdotal reports indicate that foreclosure sales have started to climb again in the second quarter. And the pipeline is clearly getting fuller.
In the first quarter, some 1.8 million homeowners nationwide fell behind on their loans by 60 to 90 days, a 15% increase from the prior quarter, according to Moody's Economy.com. The research firm said that loan defaults rose sharply as well, to 844,000 in the first three months of this year.
California accounts for an outsized share of mortgage loan defaults. A stunning 135,431 homeowners in the state were hit with notices of default in the first quarter, an increase of 11% from the earlier peak in the second quarter of 2008, according to real estate information service MDA DataQuick. Foreclosure sales in the state have been moderating after averaging a high of 26,500 a month last summer.
In some communities such as Stockton, Calif., where the real estate market has been among the hardest hit in the nation with home prices plunging 60% in the last two years, many people are expecting a large increase in foreclosures.
Sales of foreclosed houses soared last year as investors and first-time home buyers swarmed over what were considered bargain houses. This year it's been unusually quiet, says Jerry Abbott, a broker and co-owner of Grupe Real Estate in Stockton. That doesn't make sense, he said, because he sees many houses in foreclosure in the city.
