Serious mortgage delinquency is lower than anytime since 2007, while the foreclosure inventory has declined 52 consecutive months.
Out of all the borrowers on U.S. residential loans, 3.2 percent were past due at least 90 days on their home loans as of Feb. 29.
The rate of serious delinquency on the nation’s mortgages hasn’t been that low since before the financial crisis in November 2007.
That was according to CoreLogic Inc.’s
National Foreclosure Report February 2016.
CoreLogic previously reported 90-day delinquency at 3.2 percent as of Jan. 31, 2016, and 4.0 percent as of Feb. 28, 2015.
“Job creation averaged 207,000 during the first two months of 2016, and incomes grew over the past year,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Dr. Frank Nothaft said in the report. “More income and improved household finances have helped bring serious delinquency rates down in nearly every state.”
In just
New Jersey, the 90-day rate was 7.5 percent, February’s highest rate. The rate was 6.3 percent in New York, followed by 5.1 percent in Florida, 5.0 percent in Mississippi and 4.7 percent in No. 5 Maine.
The lowest rate of serious delinquency was 1.0 percent in North Dakota.
“However, serious delinquency rates increased in North Dakota and West Virginia, two states affected by price declines for the energy fuel each produces,” Nothaft added.
As the most-recent date, around 434,000 U.S. residences were in some stage of foreclosure, fewer than the downwardly revised 446,000 homes in foreclosure as of January.
The latest month’s inventory was also down from February 2015, when the inventory stood at an upwardly revised 571,000. The foreclosure inventory has declined on a year-over-year basis for 52 consecutive months.
February 2016’s foreclosure rate was 1.2 percent,
the same as previously reported for the first month of this year. The foreclosure rate was an upwardly revised 1.5 percent one year earlier.
In New Jersey, the foreclosure rate during February 2016 was 4.0 percent, worse than any other state in the nation. Next was New York’s 3.4 percent, then Hawaii’s 2.3 percent, Florida’s 2.2 percent and the District of Columbia’s 2.2 percent.
At only 0.3 percent, Alaska had the country’s lowest foreclosure rate.
Mortgage servicers and their service providers completed 34,000 U.S. foreclosures in February 2016, dropping from the upwardly revised 39,000 real-estate-owned filings the prior month.
The latest activity brought year-to-date completed foreclosures to 73,000.
In February 2015, repossessions numbered a downwardly revised 38,000.
CoreLogic noted that monthly foreclosures averaged 21,000 prior to housing crisis.
Foreclosures completed during the most-recent 12-month period in five states — Florida, Michigan, Texas, California and Ohio — accounted for nearly half of all foreclosures.
