Foreclosure errors still common at big banks

 More than half a decade into the foreclosure crisis, the big banks still haven’t cleaned up their act, according to a new administrator’s report.

In the first half of 2013, three of America’s largest lenders continued to make errors when foreclosing on properties.

The severity of these errors ranged from inaccurately stating the amounts owed by homeowners in bankruptcy, to failing to respond expeditiously on potential short sales or loan modifications, according to the New York Post.

The ongoing errors came to light in a report released last week by Joseph Smith, the monitor of the $25 billion national mortgage settlement. The report found that Citi had a failure rate of 25 percent on short-sale document collection timeline compliance; Chase failed a pre-foreclosure initiation metric and loan modification timeline; and Bank of America failed three metrics, one of which regards the amount owed to bankrupt homeowners.

“It’s appalling,” Liz Ryan Murray, policy director of National People’s Action, told the New York Post. “The standards are common-sense customer-service issues, [like] don’t screw up the billing … and they can’t even get these right.” [NYP] –Christopher Cameron