Despite recent troubling signs of rising delinquency, a new report indicates that the one-month late-payment rate on residential mortgages eased last month.
December’s 30-day delinquency rate for U.S. home loans was 12.26 percent. That worked out to 6,167,000 defaulted loans.
The statistics were released Thursday by Lender Processing Services Inc., which claims that its loan servicing platform, MSP, is used in the servicing of around half of all U.S. mortgages.
Late payments improved from 6,260,000 delinquent loans for a rate of 12.31 percent in November.
The retreat was good news following word from Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service and Experian that 90-day delinquency was up for the fourth month in a row to 2.19 percent in December.
Also reporting higher year-end delinquency was Bank of America Corp., where the 30-day rate climbed 38 BPS between Sept. 30 and Dec. 31; Citigroup Inc., which said delinquency climbed to 41 BPS during the same period; and Wells Fargo &Â Co., with delinquency climbing 33Â BPS.
But JPMorgan Chase &Â Co. said its Q4 delinquency was 11 BPS better than Q3.
On a national basis, there were 6,870,000 past-due loans in December 2010 with a rate of 12.98 percent.
The year-end 2011 rate reflected delinquency excluding foreclosures of 8.15 percent, the same as November.
But the total U.S. foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate eased to 4.11 percent from 4.16 percent.
The states with the worst delinquency — Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey and Illinois — were ranked the same as the prior month. A year earlier, Georgia was among the group.
There was little movement among the five states with the lowest delinquency rates:Â Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska and North Dakota.
