Mortgage Modification -- the "Good" and "Bad" Lenders -- December 2009 edition

(MoneyWatch)  The idea of the federal government's "Making Home Affordable" program is to help homeowners with their mortgages, by offering them new terms, also known as modifications.

The target is to help 3-4 million homeowners over three years. The number of permanent modifications that have taken place so far? 31,382.

I know it takes some time to get the paperwork going, but dudes, seriously. When Hercules had to clean out the Augean stables, he did it with a river, not with a toothbrush.

To the end of at least making bankers feel embarrassed they're not moving faster, every month when the modification statistics come out, we report what percentage of eligible loans are being modified, sorted by bank.

Last week, we got the grades for November -- in a report formally titled the "Making Home Affordable Program Servicer Performance Report through November 2009." Note that the program is often called "HAMP" for short.

Some of the big banks, such as Citimortgage and GMAC, deserve credit for continuing to up their percentages, bit by bit. Citi, which last month had put 40 percent of its eligible loans into at least a trial modification, is up to 43 percent this month. GMAC, which was at 35 percent last month, rose to 39 percent this month. A smaller insititution, Bayview Loan Servicing of Coral Gables, went from 22 percent of eligible loans modified last month to 30 percent this month. Kudos to them all.

What follows here is this month's Top Ten (and Bottom Five):

HAMP Heroes

1. Saxon Mortgage Services, Irving, Texas (44%)
2. Citimortgage, O'Fallon, Missouri (43%)
3. GMAC Mortgage, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania (39%)
4. Aurora Loan Services, Littleton, Colorado (33%)
5. Select Portfolio Servicing, Salt Lake City, Utah (32%)
6. JP Morgan Chase, New York, New York (31%)
7. Wells Fargo Bank, San Francisco, California (30%)
8. Bayview Loan Servicing, Coral Gables, Florida (30%)
9. US Bank, Cincinnati, Ohio (25%)
10. Nationstar Mortgage, Lewisville, Texas (24%)

HAMP "Hardly" (less than five percent of loans modified)

1. Bank United, Coral Gables, Florida (0 percent of loans modified; the bank began participation in the HAMP program on October 23)
2. MorEquity, Inc., Evansville, Illinois
3. HomeEq Servicing, Sacramento, California
4. RG Mortgage Corporation, San Juan, Puerto Rico
5. Wachovia Mortgage, FSB, North Las Vegas, Nevada

Read More:

• Loan Modification Judge Blasts "Bad" Bank, Forgives Mortgage
• Mortgage Modification -- the "Good" and "Bad" Lenders -- November 2009 edition
• Mortgage Modification -- the "Good" and "Bad" Lenders -- October 2009 edition
• Three Million Mortgages Still Need to be Modified