U.S. mortgage servicers helped 545,000 subprime borrowers stay in their homes in the second half of last year by modifying loans or setting up repayment plans, according to a revised industry survey.

Hope Now, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of mortgage servicers, trade groups and credit counselors, said the report released Wednesday updates figures announced last month to include December data. The group said in January that servicers had helped 370,000 subprime borrowers in the same time period.

"The message is that as the year progressed, more and more borrowers were being helped either through repayment plans or modifications," Bill Longbrake, the Financial Services Roundtable's senior policy adviser and the report's author, said in a telephone interview.

Federal bank regulators in recent weeks have amplified calls for the mortgage industry to modify more loans to stem foreclosures and keep struggling borrowers from losing their homes in the subprime crisis and the worst housing slump in a quarter century.

"I strongly encourage market participants to adopt and to implement these fast-track modification proposals as quickly as possible," Federal Reserve Governor Randall Kroszner said in a speech Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

Servicers, companies that collect loan payments, modified 150,000 loans and set up 395,000 repayment plans for subprime borrowers, those with weak credit or high debt, according to the report, which surveyed
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the 10 largest subprime-mortgage servicers.

Overall, servicers helped 869,000 borrowers in the second half of 2007, with 652,000 repayment plans and 217,000 loan modifications, the survey said.

"We're not responding to the pressure," Longbrake said. "We're just reporting the information that our servicers are providing us."

While the numbers are "very impressive," repayment plans and loan modifications are a "temporary fix" that delay foreclosure, Jim Carr, chief operating officer at the Washington, D.C.-based National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said Wednesday. "These borrowers need to be refinanced into fixed-rate affordable loans," Carr said.

Related Link: LOAN CHANGES HELPED 545,000 STAY IN HOMES

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