This article is rather timely (via).

Reports of lenders repossessing the wrong home are further tarnishing the banking industry’s image, already bruised by bailouts and bonuses.

The mix-ups have been perpetuated by the sheer number of foreclosures being processed today as well as the various layers of communication involved. Addresses and other information passed from one department to another, or from a contractor to a subcontractor, can get garbled along the way.

…

Though such gaffes are rare, they have happened enough times to lead at least one major servicer to rethink and retool its default-management process. Bank of America Corp., the nation’s largest servicer, is updating its contractor-training tools and adding a step when securing a property to ensure that the right home receives the repossession notice.

B of A “rekeys” - changes the locks - on about 16,000 properties a month, said Rebecca Mairone, the Charlotte company’s head of servicing. In the last seven months, B of A is aware of just 11 mistakes. That gives it an accuracy rate of about 99.99%.

For those on the losing end of those 11 mistakes, the consequences can be rather severe. Still, the consequences are less than those for the death penalty, and we don’t claim to have nearly as high an accuracy rate on that. Ok, that was unnecessary and non-topical snark. I really just wanted to share this article because it actually provided some numbers for things I had previously only seen single cases reported on.