By VERNON CLEMENT JONES, Guardian Business Editor, vernon@nasguard.com

The country's mortgage corporation has moved to repossess 53 properties, now in various stages of foreclosure and representing a record number for an institution once unwilling to take that step.

"They are foreclosures that were initiated last year," Managing Director Jerome Godfrey of Bahamas Mortgage Corporation told Guardian Business Tuesday. "Thirty-six of them have been presented with demand letters from our attorneys, 12 are at the stage of court filings and five are awaiting court orders to vacate the property."

Those cases demonstrate a new willingness on the part of the lender to crack down on delinquent borrowers, now representing more than a quarter of its active loans.

"This has become a concern for the corporation because the ratio of our loans in arrears presently stands at 27.43 percent of the total portfolio," Godfrey said.

"This ratio is too high and despite our efforts to cause our Bahamians borrowers to meet their mortgage obligations, we have discovered that priority to repay their mortgages at the Bahamas Mortgage Corporation is not what it ought to be."

More troubling is the number of accounts now 90 days past due — some 16 percent of its loans. They represent borrowers that most private banks would have already targeted for foreclosure proceedings.

The corporation, focused on servicing low-income Bahamians, has historically been unwilling to join them.

It overcame that reluctance starting late 2006 when Godfrey's predecessor, Rory Higgs, adopted a more aggressive stance with deadbeat borrowers.

In the first six months of 2007, alone, the corporation had move to foreclose on 65 properties — a 400 percent spike from the previous year.

But that posture was softened, effectively replaced with a stepped-up advertising campaign to encourage compliance.

That kinder, gentler approach may not have been as effective as corporation officials might have hoped.

"Tougher measures are ahead," said Godfrey Tuesday. "These measures can result in foreclosure on the borrowers' property.

"However and before that time comes, the corporation is again reaching out to persons with mortgage loans in arrears to come into to our loan administration department here in Nassau, Abaco and Freeport to update their delinquent mortgages."

The appeal follows a similar move by another quasi-governmental lender, the Bahamas Development Bank.

Faced with delinquencies representing more than 50 percent of its portfolio, it too has mounted a PR blitz designed to bring accounts into good standing.

For those who fail, however, to accept that invitation, property seizure is now a very real possibility.