I want to clarify that I didn’t “read too much” into the (scanty) stats provided by foreclosureforum.com when posting above.
Because I was following about 45 NOD’s in my local area from 2010 forward for almost two years, I realized only two of them ever went to trustees sale. After checking MLS aggregators and just intermittently watching the properties in person, I came to the conclusion that about eight of them sold short (more could have done so without puttting the property on the MLS – I didn’t check ARCC sales).
The majority of borrowers who had NOD’s filed from 2007 forward never got a Notice of Sale filed. And the ones that did had up to 12 postponements. So all of those thousands of remaining NOD’s filed were not acted upon by the lenders and a (good) portion of them (don’t know the percentage) were not sold short or taken back with a deed-in-lieu. The only thing to deduct from this study is that the trustor previously in default either still resides there or has tenants or relatives that do.
My guess is a portion of delinquent borrowers did not want to sell short and further ruin their credit so cooperated with a mod when it was offered to them.
