The number of home foreclosures is down sharply from the depths of the financial crisis, even as many of the mortgage firms involved remain the same, including Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. But the latest foreclosure rankings also include a number of firms that barely registered or did not exist when the crisis began a decade ago, the New York Times reported today. These new entrants include firms affiliated with the private equity giant Lone Star Funds, the mortgage lender PennyMac Loan Services, the investment bank Goldman Sachs and the mortgage firm Carrington Mortgage Services. This changing of the guard in the foreclosure rankings, based on data compiled by RealtyTrac, reflects the new reality that most foreclosures today are not coming from mortgages written during the post-crisis period, but from soured loans written before the crisis that are in the final stages of liquidation.
