DS News

46 FORECLOSURE-RELATED COMPLAINTS DECREASING FASTER THAN NON-CURRENT INVENTORY An in-depth examination of data released last month by Black Knight Financial Ser- vices and the Five Star Institute on consumer complaints received by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over a two-year pe- riod showed complaints related to foreclosure, modification, and collection are declining at a faster rate than non-current inventory. Black Knight's March 2015 Mortgage Moni- tor released early last month further analyzed the white paper Black Knight and Five Star released in early April titled, "Analysis and Study of CFPB Consumer Complaint Data Related to Mortgage Servicing Activities." e analysis in the March Mortgage Monitor compared the CFPB's specific mortgage-related complaint categories and associated volumes with their corresponding mortgage servicing volumes for the full two-year period of 2013 and 2014. e number of complaints declined while the number of current loans increased. ere are approximately 47 million current mortgage loans nationwide, and 3.7 million of those are 30 days or more delinquent, a decline of 27 percent from the previous year. At the start of 2013, there were fewer current mortgage loans (45 million) and more delinquencies (5.1 million). Black Knight analyzed the complaints the CFPB received in two categories: loan servic- ing, payment, and escrow account complaints measured against current mortgage loans; and loan modification, collection, and foreclosure complaints measured against non-current loans. e data showed modification, collection, and foreclosure-related complaints were falling at an even faster rate than the number of non- current loans over the same period. In Q1 2013, the number of such complaints received by the Bureau totaled 10,047; for the fourth quarter of 2014, that number was 4,741, a decline of 53 percent compared to the 27 percent decline for non-current loan inventory. e number of foreclosure, collection, and modification complaints received by the Bureau computed to about 13 complaints for every 10,000 non-current loans. e number of loan servicing, escrow, and payment-related complaints has been relatively stable with the volume of current inventory over the two-year period of 2013 and 2014. As of the end of 2014, the number of such complaints averaged less than one per 10,000 current loans (0.77). is number briefly spiked up to 0.94 in Q1 2014, which was "potentially indicating more of a publicity effect from CFPB media efforts than discrete servicer actions," according to Black Knight. e CFPB began accepting mortgage-relat- ed complaints in early 2013 and received about 59,000 such complaints that year, 37 percent of the total complaints received by the Bureau (163,700). e number of mortgage-related complaints declined by about 8,000 in 2014, down to 51,200, or 20 percent of all complaints received that year (250,700). Editor's note: e Five Star Institute is the par- ent company of DS News and DSNews.com. AACER: BANKRUPTCY FILINGS HAVE FALLEN 47 PERCENT SINCE PEAK Both the total bankruptcy filings for April and the average filings per day declined from March in the same number of filing days, continuing a trend that has been ongoing since the height of the financial crisis in 2010, according to April 2015 AACER bankruptcy data reported by Epiq Systems. In April, there were 77,884 total bankrupt- cy filings, down from March's total of 81,622 in the same number of filing days (22) during the month. April totaled 3,540 filings per day, compared with 3,712 in March. Since April 2010, when 146,373 bankruptcy filings were reported for the month nation- wide, the number of filings has declined steadily every April. e total number of filings for April 2015 (77,884) experienced nearly a 47 percent decline from the peak total reached in April 2010. April 2015's total is a decline of 10,279 from April 2014's total (88,163). e total number of bankruptcy filings year-to-date for the first four months of 2015 is 283,587, compared to 320,002 for the first four months of 2014. e average number of filings per month for the first four months of 2015 is 70,917 for 83 filing days, an average of 3,417 per day. For the first four months of 2014, bankruptcy filings nationwide totaled 319,993 over 83 filing days, an average of 79,998 per month and 3,855 per day. e state with the most cumulative filings year-to-date is California with 28,931, fol- lowed by Illinois at 20,070. Florida was close behind at 19,460. In filings per capita for the first four months of 2015, Tennessee and Ala- bama were once again first and second among states (as they were in January, February, and March) with 5.63 and 5.24 filings for every thousand people, respectively. Both states experienced slight increases from March's totals—5.52 and 5.14 per thousand people. e national average in bankruptcy fil- ings per capita ticked slightly upward from March to April, from 2.65 up to 2.74. Ranking behind Florida and Alabama in bankruptcy filings per capita in April were Georgia in third (4.85), Illinois in fourth at 4.66, Utah in fifth with 4.31, and Indiana in sixth with 4.27.

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