Citi's holiday treat: No foreclosures for a month
By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterDecember 17, 2009: 5:18 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Citigroup will suspend foreclosures and evictions for 30 days, giving 4,000 at-risk borrowers a break during the holiday season, the company said Thursday.
The New York-based bank said distressed homeowners with first mortgage loans owned by CitiMortgage or CityFinancial North America who also meet certain other criteria will not be subject to foreclosure sales or notifications between Dec. 18 and Jan. 17.
"We hope that with this suspension we can make the holidays a little less stressful for our customers who are going through a very difficult time," said Sanjiv Das, chief executive of CitiMortgage, in a statement.
Citi (C, Fortune 500) said the suspension affects 2,000 borrowers scheduled to have foreclosure sales and another 2,000 that were to receive foreclosure notices during the period, which amounts to approximately 20% of the company's $746 billion mortgage servicing and lending portfolio.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/17/news/companies/Citigroup_mortgage_suspension/index.htm?cnn=yesThe real reason is probably that a lot of their people take vacation this time of year and they are just giving the short handed staff a break...