The share of residential mortgages with past-due payments tumbled more than 40 basis points last month. While the foreclosure rate was lower, it was newly delinquent home loans that had the biggest impact on the overall performance.
The rate of 30-day delinquency, including foreclosures, was 11.70 percent during February. That amounted to 5,846,000 loans.
Delinquency tumbled from 12.12 percent in January. It was the third consecutive month of improvement.
Lender Processing Services Inc., which delivered the data Wednesday, previously reported that delinquency of at least one month was 12.95 percent in February 2011.
The statistics were based on LPS’ loan-level database of nearly 40 million mortgages.
States with the highest level of delinquency were the same as in January: Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey and Illinois.
There was also no change among the states with the lowest delinquency rates: Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota and North Dakota.
The number of delinquent loans, excluding mortgages in foreclosure, worked out to 3,781,000. That put February’s 30-day delinquency rate at 7.57 percent, sinking from 7.97 percent a month earlier.
There were 2,065,000 loans in the foreclosure pre-sale inventory last month. The foreclosure rate eased to 4.13 percent from January’s 4.15 percent.
