Foreclosure activity eased in April nationally — although Ohio escalated, according to one report. Another report indicates an earlier month saw serious jumbo delinquency worsen.
Foreclosure filings totaled 147,708 last month, RealtyTrac reported today. Foreclosure filings represented one filing for every 783 U.S. households.
The statistics were reportedly derived from a national database of 900,000 foreclosure and pre-foreclosure properties in nearly 2,500 counties.
April activity edged down 1 percent from the previous month and was 62 percent worse than the same month in 2006, the statement said.
“After hitting a two-year high in March, U.S. foreclosure activity slipped,” RealtyTrac’s CEO James J. Saccacio said in the statement.
The state with the worst foreclosure rate was Nevada, with one filing for every 232 households, RealtyTrac reported. Next was Colorado, with one filing for every 314 households, followed by Connecticut, with one filing for every 329 households.
The state with the most filings was California, the announcement indicated. April filings totaled 30,505 in the Golden State — even though the figure represented a 3 percent monthly decline.
ReatlyTrac said Florida, with 14,318 filings, had the second highest number of filings. But No. 3, Ohio, saw its filings soar 39 percent from March to 11,431.
The metropolitan area with the highest foreclosure rate was Stockton, Calif., with one filing for every 131 households — “nearly six times the national average,” according to the announcement.
Another report, from Moody’s Investors Service, indicated serious delinquency on prime single-family loans higher than $417,000 increased about 3 basis points from the prior month to 0.383 percent in February.
The jumbo indexes “saw the most rapid absolute increases over the past several months, although their overall rates remain low with each being only a fraction of a percent,” the ratings agency said. But “serious delinquencies over the first year of seasoning for the 2006 ARM vintage are tracking a level last seen in the 2001 vintage, which saw a 60+ day delinquency rate of 0.52 percent at 12 months of seasoning and represents the poorest-performing ARM vintage over the six years.”
But Moody’s information may have been reflected in earlier RealtyTrac reports — leaving the likely prospect of an April decrease.
Jumbo delinquency of 30-59 days was 0.687 percent, Moody’s reported. Sixty-day delinquency was 0.125 percent, while foreclosures were 0.119 percent and real estate owned was 0.38 percent.
