The good news is that serious mortgage delinquency in October was at its lowest level in more than six years, and the foreclosure inventory continued to diminish. The bad news is that September’s repossessions were revised up to the highest level in nearly two years.
Residential loans that were past due at least 90 days accounted for 4.2 percent of the nation’s collective mortgage servicing portfolio as of October.
The rate of serious mortgage delinquency has not been that low since July 2008.
Ninety-day delinquency was previously reported at 4.2 percent for September, while the year-earlier rate was 5.1 percent.
CoreLogic Inc. released the metrics Thursday.
At 9.1 percent, New Jersey’s 90-day rate was worse than any other state. Florida followed with an 8.4 percent rate. Next was New York’s 7.4 percent, Maryland’s 6.0 percent and Mississippi’s 5.7 percent.
The lowest rate of serious delinquency was in North Dakota: 1.1 percent.
As of Oct. 31, roughly 605,000 U.S. loans were in some state of foreclosure. The foreclosure inventory declined from a revised 618,000 as of Sept. 30 and improved significantly from 875,000 as of Oct. 31, 2013.
CoreLogic projects that the foreclosure inventory will drop below a half-million next year.
The most-recent numbers worked out to a 1.6 percent foreclosure inventory rate, the same as in September. As of October 2013, the foreclosure inventory rate was 2.2 percent.
New Jersey had the highest foreclosure inventory rate: 5.5Â percent. Tied for second place were Florida and New York with a rate of 4.1 percent. After that was 2.9 percent in Hawaii and 2.6 percent in Maine.
Alaska’s foreclosure inventory rate was 0.4 percent — lower than any other state.
Mortgage servicers completed 41,000 foreclosures in October.
Completed foreclosures slid from 62,000 the prior month, though September’s total was significantly revised up from the 46,000 total originally reported. The revised total represents the worst month since the upwardly revised 63,000 repossessions in November 2012.
A spokesman for CoreLogic explained that the September surge was the result of an annual auction held in Detroit.
Repossessions tumbled from 55,000 in October 2013.
During the first 10 months of 2014, servicers completed 471,000 foreclosures.
To keep real-estate-owned filings in perspective, CoreLogic noted that the pace of completed foreclosures averaged just 21,000 per month between 2000 and 2006.
