9-Year Low for Serious Mortgage Delinquency

Mortgages that were past due at least 90 days as of Sept. 30, 2016, made up 2.6 percent of all mortgages outstanding — the lowest rate since August 2007.

Serious mortgage delinquency
came in at a previously reported 2.8 percent as of August 2016 and a previously reported 3.4 percent as of September 2015.

The rate was among other home loan performance metrics in the National Foreclosure Report September 2016 from CoreLogic Inc.

At 5.9 percent, New Jersey’s 90-day rate was the highest. After that was 5.2 percent in New York, then Mississippi’s 4.2 percent, Florida’s 3.8 percent and Maine’s 3.8 percent.

Colorado and North Dakota shared the lowest rate of serious mortgage delinquency: 1.0 percent.

When September of this year concluded, 340,000 U.S. homes were in the foreclosure process, fewer than 350,000 a month earlier. In addition, the inventory was slashed from 493,000 a year earlier — the 59th consecutive year-over-year decline.

The foreclosure rate was 0.9 percent as of the most-recent date, “back to August 2007 levels,” CoreLogic said. In August 2016, the rate was previously reported at 0.9 percent, while the rate was an upwardly revised 1.3 percent in September 2015.

The foreclosure rate in New Jersey was 3.0 percent, higher than any other
state. New York was No. 2 with a 2.7 percent rate, followed by Maine’s 1.8 percent, Hawaii’s 1.8 percent and the District of Columbia’s 1.6 percent.

Residential loan servicers completed 36,000 U.S. foreclosures in September, worsening from a downwardly revised 34,000 the prior month but an improvement over a downwardly revised 39,000 repossessions in September 2015.

“As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006,” Irvine, California-based CoreLogic explained.