Senior officials from the Obama administration pressured executives from financial firms and mortgage servicers earlier this week when they met to step up their efforts in modifying loans for homeowners who are having troubling making monthly payments. Servicers, apparently, promised to increase the rate at which they’re performing loan modifications, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But a story in today’s New York Times suggests that mortgage companies aren’t too eager to help homeowners because those companies collect hefty fees on delinquent loans. “The longer borrowers remain delinquent, the greater the opportunities for these mortgage companies to extract revenue – fees for insurance, appraisals, title searches and legal services,” the story notes.

Even the incentives that federal government is providing to servicing companies — $1,000 for each modified loan and $1,000 a year for each of the next three years that a loan remains current – are outweighed by the fees that are collected from delinquency, according to experts quoted in the article.

For the thousands of Connecticut homeowners who are struggling to hold onto their homes, that story must be pretty infuriating.

In Connecticut, the number of homeowners at risk of foreclosure has grown. There were 11,789 lis pendens filings from January through May 2009, up 25 percent from the same period in 2008, according to The Warren Group.

In addition, 2,188 owners have lost their properties to foreclosure. The number is only slightly higher than a year earlier, and that’s probably because there have been efforts on the statewide level to aid homeowners.

A report from the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors this week that pending sales of single-family homes in the Hartford region have been on the rise for three months straight had me scratching my head.

Why? Well, the number of actual closed sales of single-family homes in Hartford County has declined by double-digit percentages year-over-year for every month in 2009, according to The Warren Group.

 The Warren Group’s last report on home sales found that May home sales in Hartford County sank more than 18.6 percent from a year ago. Figures for June are expected later this month.

 If pending sales have been increasing for three consecutive months why haven’t closed sales started to creep up or flatten out? That clearly hasn’t happened yet, unless there is some miraculous spike in sales in June.

 So what’s going on?

 Are willing buyers and sellers coming together and signing purchase and sale agreements only to see the deals fall apart because appraisals are coming up short? That’s one complaint real estate brokers have been sharing over and over. Or are buyers stepping up only to find that lenders are hesitating to provide the financing they promised? 

 Or is it that real estate agents are pricing properties without taking into full consideration some of the foreclosed homes that are selling and then watching as appraisals come in much lower than the agreed upon price?

 Could it be the pending home sales index, which many economists use as a key indicator of future sales, isn’t all that reliable? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I will be watching to see what The Warren Group’s June numbers look like.

Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management recently found that 26 percent of mortgage defaults are the result of homeowners who can afford their mortgages but are simply walking away because they owe more than their homes are worth.

 The study also finds that the higher the number of foreclosures in a given area, the higher the homeowners’ willingness to default.

 26 percent is a pretty startling figure, especially since going into foreclosure stays on a credit history for up to seven years and can hinder an individual’s access to credit in the future.  

 I’m wondering how many of these homeowners were actually in the camp of buyers who came to the closing with little or nothing for a down payment. I’m guessing that homeowners who had invested in say a 10 or 20 percent down payment – which would translate into $30,000 or $60,000 for a $300,000 home – in addition to closing costs and attorney’s and inspection fees, would be reluctant to purposefully default.

 It’s a lot tougher to simply turn over the keys and walk away when one has invested thousands of dollars of hard-earned savings in a property.

 But then again, that’s one of the problems with this whole housing market collapse. Too many homeowners were able to purchase a property with no money down, giving them little incentive to stick around when the housing market turned nasty. 

News reports gushed about the sale of the Greenwich Rockfeller mansion this week for $22.5 million. But what will really get tongues wagging, especially in real estate circles, is if another listed property sells.

 That property would be Leona Helmsley’s 40-acre estate in Round Hill, which is on the market for $75 million. It’s listed by Greenwich-based David Ogilvy of David Ogilvy & Assoc.

 On its Web site, the real estate company describes the property – with its 52-foot indoor pool, 75-foot outdoor pool, wine cellar and glass-walled music room — as the “most famous of all great estates”. Known as Dunnellen Hall, the property was originally listed for $125 million when it hit the market last year.

 The Helmsley estate was among 11 properties that appeared on a list of the most expensive houses in the U.S. in Ultimate Homes, which was included in the most recent issue of Unique Homes.

 The Greenwich home is one of only two properties on the Ultimate Homes list that is on the East Coast. Seven of the homes are in California.

 Also appearing on the list is the $150 million estate in Holmby Hills, Calif., owned by Candy Spelling, widow of the late producer Aaron Spelling.

Here’s one study that is likely to get a lot of attention: The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reports in a new paper that lenders aren’t modifying many loans for homeowners at risk of foreclosure because it’s not profitable for them.

 Surprising? It is if you believe many of the experts and homeowner advocates who have been saying that foreclosing on a property is much more costly and time-consuming for a lender than renegotiating a loan.

 But what I find more startling is this tidbit tucked in the paper’s conclusion: 30 to 45 percent of borrowers who had loans modified end up falling behind on their loans again within six months.

 “For this group, the lender has simply postponed foreclosure, and, if the housing market continues to decline, the lender will recover even less in foreclosure in the future,” the Fed researchers write.

 That’s a risk that most lenders aren’t going to be eager to take.