Many more are in trial modifications with an uncertain fate.
The less efficient and less well-staffed loan servicers also had more trouble making trial modifications permanent, missing out on the resulting bonuses.
Moreover, there were variations in the responses of loan servicers: some were much more sluggish about introducing trial modifications than others, even after accounting for differences in the loans themselves.
Of the 1.37 million borrowers that started trial modifications, more than half did not qualify for permanent modifications.
Herb Allison, the assistant Treasury secretary who confessed that less than 10,000 permanent modifications are in place, says he hopes more than half of the trial modifications will become permanent.
HAMP's momentum appears to be slowing, as permanent modification growth slows and the number of trial modifications decreases more sharply.
More than 900,000 homeowners have begun trial modifications since the program was announced last February, the Treasury said, but only 110,000 of them have been approved for permanent modifications.
More than half of Bank of America's trial modifications, for example, have dragged on for longer than six months.
As of March 2013, Treasury said, more than 1.1 million homeowners had moved from trial modifications to permanent modifications of their mortgages, for median savings of $546 a month, an amount that exceeds the median relief resulting from private sector modifications.
"It set a framework for evaluating mortgage modifications that moved the industry to a standard modification able to reduce payments and gave more than a million homeowners immediate relief through trial modifications that had the potential to become permanent.
