KING5-

If you think the foreclosure crisis is over, think again.  Delinquencies were up 7 percent in Washington State in the first quarter of 2012 and nearly one in every 1,600 homes is in foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosure data nationwide. 

Under a recent government settlement, five of the country’s biggest banks agreed to provide billions of dollars of relief in the form of forgiven principal and mortgage reductions.

You might expect people would jump at any chance to get a modified loan that could help them fend off foreclosure.

That’s certainly what Bank of America expected when it began sending out the first of 5,000 letters asking Washington homeowners to apply for a loan modification program that could reduce their payments by, on average, 35 percent.  

“This is a very important program, starting with the fact that most of the customers we’re working with have a foreclosure sale date in the near future, and this is probably the last best opportunity for those customers to stay in their home,” said Dan Frahm, Bank of America senior vice president.

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