“Independent” Foreclosure Review Error Rate Vastly Higher

Yves Smith points to more OCC serving bank interests (not a surprise) in “Independent” Foreclosure Review Error Rate Vastly Higher Than Previously Admitted and well worth reading as usual:

At this point, it seems hard to add insult to injury, given the terrible track record of the OCC Independent Foreclosure Reviews. But it’s nevertheless been done.

By way of background, in April 2010 the Office of the Comptroller and the Fed issued consent orders to 11 servicers (three more were added later). The orders mandated that borrowers who had had foreclosures that were pending or had completed foreclosure sales in 2009 and 2010 could request an investigation by independent reviewers, selected and paid for by the servicers but subject to approval by the OCC. It was clear from the outset, however, that this consent order process was never intended to help homeowners in a serious way, but was intended to give air cover for predatory servicers.

Even so, the foreclosure reviews turned out to be an embarrassing and costly fiasco. The investigation was halted abruptly, as more and more leaks showed that the foreclosure reviews were anything but “independent”.

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The only positive element of this sorry tale is that Elijah Cummings has soldiered on with trying to get to the bottom of this misconduct. I hope readers will call or write his office and thank him for his persistence.