Delinquent Home Mortgages 21.3 Percent Higher Than Last Year; Foreclosure Rates at Record High

Dennis Norman

A report published by Lender Processing Services (LPS) analyzing homeowner’s performance on their mortgages as of February 2010 has some data that is encouraging but that data is overshadowed by data that shows the problems int he U.S. housing market are far from over.

Let’s start with the good news…

Delinquencies on home mortgages declined in February by 1.45 percent from January and the percentage of loans that were 90 days late or more in February were at the lowest rate in 17 months. The decline in home loans that were 90+ days delinquent from December 2009 to February 2010 was the largest decline since the same period in 2005 and 2006.

Now for the sobering bad news…

Mortgaage delinquencies in February were up 21.3 percent from a year ago and foreclosure inventories continue to climb to record highs. February’s foreclosure rate of 3.31 percent is an increase of 0.06 percent from January and a 51.1 percent increase from a year ago. In addition, the average days delinquent on loans 90+ days delinquent increased to 256 days, an increase of 36 percent from a year ago when the average delinquency was 188 days.

• Total U.S. loan delinquency rate for February was 10.2 percent.
• Approximately 1.145 million loans that were current at the beginning of January were at least 30 days delinquent as of the end of February
• 3.8 percent of loans that were current in December 2009 in Nevada and Mississippi were delinquent as of the end of February 2010
• 4.56 percent of loans moved to “worse” status in February vs. 2.22 percent that improved
• For every 1 loan that improved in February in terms of delinquency, 2.1 loans deteriorated.
• The percentage of loans that have missed 12 payments and are not in foreclosure has almost doubled in the past year.

The national average for home loans that are not current as of February is 13.5 percent. The state with the highest percentage of home loans that are not current is Florida with almost a fourth of the home loans not current (23.8 percent) followed by Nevada at 23.3 percent, Mississippi at 17.5 percent and Arizona at 16.3 percent.

Information provided by LPS Applied Analytics

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