[quote=temeculaguy]
One element the conspiracy theorists fail to adress is that most of the banks conducting the forclosures are just servicers of the loan, it isn’t their money to lose, it’s a third party investor or many third party investors. [/quote]

Hit the nail on the head. I’m thinking that mortgages held by actual banks – as opposed to Fannie/Freddie and mortgages that end up in securitizations (and thus not serviced by banks) – make up less 25% of the mortgages in default and foreclosure.

The single biggest problems (with respect to foreclosures getting to market) are: (1) the servicers are massively understaffed and not properly trained to handle the current volumes, (2) the servicers are losing money hand over fist and thus don’t have the resources to properly staff up (more losses!), and (3) the servicers are scared of lawsuits if they don’t dot every “i” and cross every “t”. And, finally, they’ve got the government trying to tell them what to do, some of which violates the contractual agreements they have with the trusts. So, the servicers are totally fucked… and thus moving like molasses.