The rate of serious delinquency on home loans was lower again.
But a month-over-month up tick in the number of repossessions was reported.
Residential loans that were past due at
least 90 days accounted for 3.1 percent of all U.S. home loans that were outstanding as of March 2016.
The latest rate of serious mortgage delinquency wound up being lower than the 3.2 percent 90-day rate previously reported for the prior month.
The details were delivered in the National Foreclosure Report March 2016 from CoreLogic Inc.
Ninety-day delinquency was also lower than 3.9 percent previously reported for March 2015 and
turned out to be the lowest rate since November 2007.
The serious delinquency rate was highest in New Jersey at 7.4 percent. New York’s 6.1 percent followed, then Florida’s 4.9 percent, Mississippi’s 4.7 percent and Maine’s 4.6 percent.
At just 1.0 percent, North Dakota had the lowest 90-day rate of delinquency of any state.
Approximately 427,000 U.S. homes were in some stage of foreclosure as of the most-recent date, fewer than the upwardly revised 437,000 reported for February.
The foreclosure inventory was also down from the upwardly revised 556,000 as of March 31, 2015 — marking the 53rd year-over-year decline.
Mortgages in foreclosure accounted for 1.1 percent of all loans as of March 31, 2016, lower than 1.2 percent previously reported for a month earlier and 1.4 percent a year earlier.
“Delinquencies and foreclosure rates are now at pre-crash levels as the benefits of higher home prices, improving economic fundamentals and years of cautious underwriting are being felt across the country,” CoreLogic President and Chief Executive Officer Anand Nallathambi said in an accompanying statement. “Longer term, as loans made since 2009 account for a larger share of outstanding debt, we anticipate that the serious delinquency rate will have further substantive declines.”
In New Jersey, the foreclosure rate was 4.0 percent in March 2016, higher than in any other state. Next was New York’s 3.3 percent rate, then 2.3 percent in Hawaii, 2.2 percent in the District of Columbia and 2.1 percent in Florida.
Alaska’s 0.3 percent foreclosure rate was the lowest in the nation.
Mortgage servicers completed 36,000 foreclosures, worsening from the downwardly revised 33,000 real-estate-owned filing in February.
In March 2015, there were an upwardly revised 42,000 REO filings.
From Jan. 1 through March 31 of this year, there have been 102,000 foreclosures completed.
