Two reports this week indicated that mortgage delinquency improved last month, while government data point to the first increase in home prices in a year.
The rate of delinquency for borrowers who are at least three months behind on their mortgage payments fell to 12.07 percent during May, according to monthly data released by Lender Processing Services Inc.
The rate was better than 12.11 percent in April and also an improvement from 12.38 percent during the same month last year.
LPS, which claims that half of all U.S. mortgages are serviced using its mortgage servicing package, said it extrapolated the delinquency rates from its loan-level database of nearly 40 million mortgage loans.
The positive report came on the heels of good news about the S&P/Experian first-mortgage credit-default index — which improved 7 basis points between April and May.
It also preceded a report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency indicating that U.S. house prices rose for the first time since May 2010 by 0.8 percent in April. Still, according to the FHFA, prices sit 5.7 percent below a year earlier and 19.3 percent less than the April 2007 peak.
The five states with the worst default rates during May were Florida, Nevada, Mississippi, New Jersey and Illinois, LPS said.
The lowest delinquency was in Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota and North Dakota.
Last month’s U.S. delinquency, excluding foreclosures, was 7.96 percent — inching down from 7.97 percent a month earlier. The number of delinquent loans was 4,187,000.
The foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate during May was 4.11 percent, also an improvement from April when the foreclosure rate was 4.14 percent. Last month’s inventory worked out to 2,164,000 real-estate-owned assets.
