Home loan borrowers continued to improve on their payment histories — with the rate of serious delinquency declining to the lowest level in more than six years. Foreclosure activity also diminished.
In the final month of 2014, delinquency of at least 90 days on residential loans was 4.1 percent.
CoreLogic Inc. delivered the loan performance data.
Although CoreLogic previously reported November’s 90-day rate at 4.0 percent, it was apparently revised up because the mortgage service provider noted that the last time that the serious delinquency rate was this low was in June 2008.
Ninety-day delinquency was 5.0 percent in December 2013.
By state, New Jersey’s 9.0 percent 90-day rate was the worst in the nation. Florida landed in the No. 2 position with a 7.9 percent rate. Next was New York’s 7.3 percent, Maryland’s 5.8 percent and Mississippi’s 5.6 percent.
A 1.0 percent serious delinquency rate in North Dakota was the country’s lowest.
As of Dec. 31, 2014, there were around 552,000 mortgages in some stage of foreclosure, retreating from an upwardly revised 569,000 the previous month.
At the end of 2013, loans in foreclosure numbered an upwardly revised 840,000.
The foreclosure inventory has fallen 38 consecutive months.
The latest foreclosure activity put the foreclosure rate at 1.4 percent, 10 basis points lower than in November and down 70 BPS from December 2013.
New Jersey’s 5.2 percent foreclosure rate was more than any other state in December 2014. New York followed with a 4.0 percent rate, then 3.7 percent in Florida, 2.7 percent in Hawaii and 2.4 percent in Washington, D.C.
Arizona and Montana shared the lowest foreclosure rate: 0.5 percent.
Mortgage servicers completed 39,000 foreclosures during the most-recent month.
Real-estate-owned filings were 41,000 in November 2014 and an upwardly revised 46,000 in December 2013.
For all of last year, repossessions numbered 563,000, falling from 2013, when foreclosures completed totaled 662,000.
While annual foreclosures were down my more half from the 1.2 million peak reached in 2010, they remain at twice the level of normal activity more than a decade ago.
By state, Florida had 118,009 completed foreclosures last year, more than any other state. Michigan ranked No. 2 with 48,822. After that were 35,147 in Texas, 29,350 in California and 27,698 in Ohio.
