The monthly rate of mortgage delinquency edged higher during May, though the rate of foreclosures was down by a greater degree.
Residential loans that were either at least 30 days past due or in the foreclosure process numbered 2,727,000 as of the end of last month.
The total was comprised of 2,153,000 mortgages past due at least 30 days and 574,000 properties in the foreclosure pre-sale inventory.
Black Knight Financial Services delivered the home-loan performance details Wednesday.
That put the non-current rate on U.S. mortgages at 5.38 percent as of May 31.
Delinquency slipped from the end of the previous month, when the non-current rate was 5.41 percent.
An even bigger improvement was made versus the same month last year, when 6.45 percent of home loans were delinquent or in foreclosure.
Last month’s non-current rate was 11.09 percent in Mississippi, the worst rate in the nation. Next was Louisiana’s 9.13 percent, followed by New Jersey’s 8.86 percent, Maine’s 7.85 percent and Alabama’s 7.85 percent.
North Dakota’s non-current rate was 2.33 percent last month, the country’s lowest.
May’s U.S. non-current rate included a 30-day delinquency rate, excluding foreclosures, of 4.25 percent.
The 30-day rate inched up from 4.24
percent a month earlier but was significantly lower than 4.96 percent a year earlier.
Ninety-day delinquency, based on a Mortgage Daily analysis of Black Knight data, was an estimated 1.42 percent as of May 31, 2016.
Also included in last month’s non-current rate was a 1.13 percent foreclosure inventory rate, 4 basis points lower than at the end of April and 36 BPS less than than at the same point in 2015.
Black Knight reported that there were 62,100 foreclosure starts during May 2016 — up from a 10-year low the prior month. The latest activity brought the year-to-date total to 326,800.