The first month of this year was a good one for home-loan performance, with delinquency and foreclosures retreating.
U.S. mortgages that were at least 30 days past due or in the foreclosure inventory numbered 2.643 million as of Jan. 31.
That turned out to be the lowest number of residential loans that were classified as non-current since August 2006.
The total contracted from the end of last year, when there were 2.731 million, and 3.234 million at the same point in 2016.
Black Knight Financial Services delivered the latest data in is First Look at January 2017 report.
Last month’s non-current count consisted of 2.162 million loans that were past due at least 30 days but not in foreclosure and 481,000 loans in the foreclosure pre-sale inventory.
As a percentage of the roughly 50.871 million total mortgages outstanding, the non-current rate was 5.20 percent at the end of January 2017.
The non-current rate declined from 5.37 percent as of year-end 2016 and
6.39 percent as of Jan. 31, 2016.
At 11.30 percent, Mississippi continued to have the highest non-current rate of any state. Louisiana’s 9.78 percent was next, then Alabama’s 7.91 percent, West Virginia’s 7.74 percent and New Jersey’s 7.47 percent.
With a non-current rate of just 2.28 percent, loan performance was best in North Dakota.
Excluding foreclosures, the U.S. 30-day rate
was reduced to 4.25 percent from 4.42 percent ad of Dec. 31, 2016. In January of last year, the 30-day rate was 5.09 percent.
The foreclosure inventory rate
also improved, falling to 0.94 percent in January 2017 from 0.95 percent a month earlier and 1.30 percent a year earlier.
Black Knight reported that there were 70,400 foreclosure starts during the first month of this year.
