'The bank owns my town!'

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which account for the majority of all mortgage lending these days, have been actively lobbying their industry partners -- the servicers and attorneys who handle the foreclosure process -- to either quickly get paperwork filed and push defaults through the system or put borrowers into a foreclosure prevention program, said Belcher.

The industry has gotten better at dealing with the deluge; it has hired staff and refined procedures to improve efficiency. But a return to more normal processing times will take time given the enormous backlog.
Fannie Mae ignored foreclosure abuses

There were more than 4 million homes either in foreclosure or 90 days or more late with payments in August. Many of the new delinquencies are actually repeats: About 75% of the borrowers who fell a month behind in payments in August had missed payments before and then caught up -- only to fall behind again.

On the plus side, the percentage of new seriously delinquent loans (90 days or more behind on payments) whose borrowers were up-to-date on payments just six months earlier has dropped to 1.4% from a peak of 2.9% in early 2009.

Many of those borrowers suffered through severe financial reversals, such as a job loss. Foreclosure and unemployment rates generally move in lockstep with each other. To top of page