It’s been more than a year and half since the rate of serious delinquency on home loans has deteriorated. The foreclosure rate has a similar record.
The latest reading on residential loan performance had delinquency of at least 90 days, including mortgages in the process of foreclosure and real-estate-owned, at 5.2 percent in September.
Serious delinquency improved for the third consecutive month from 5.3 percent in August.
Delinquency was 6.7 percent in September 2012.
Historical data from CoreLogic Inc., which reported September 2013’s statistics on Thursday, indicates that the last time the 90-day rate moved higher was in January 2012, when it stood at a revised 7.4 percent.
Florida had the worst 90-day rate in September 2013: 11.9 percent. Next was New Jersey’s 10.6 percent, then 8.1 percent in Nevada, 7.9 percent in New York and 7.2 percent in Maryland.
At 1.2 percent, North Dakota had the lowest rate of serious delinquency in September.
The national foreclosure inventory rate was 2.3 percent during the latest period, better than 2.4 percent in August and a revised 3.2 percent in September 2012.
The foreclosure rate also has not worsened since January 2012, when it was 3.5 percent.
CoreLogic Chief Economist Dr. Mark Fleming noted in the report that the foreclosure inventory now stands at the same level as early 2009.
“Just over 900,000 properties remain in the inventory, two thirds of them in judicial states where the foreclosure process is typically slower,” Fleming stated. “Consequently, the pace of overall improvement in the inventory will slow down and distressed assets will cast a long shadow over housing markets in states with judicial foreclosure.”
As was the case with serious delinquency, Florida also was the state with the highest foreclosure rate at 7.4 percent.
New Jersey was next with a 6.5 percent foreclosure rate, then New York’s 4.8 percent, Maine’s 4.0 percent and Connecticut’s 3.7 percent.
All of the five-worst states are judicial foreclosure states.
With a foreclosure rate of 0.4 percent, Wyoming — a non-judicial foreclosure state — had the most favorable rate.
CoreLogic reported that 51,000 U.S. foreclosures were completed in September. However, CoreLogic has been regularly revising its foreclosure numbers after its initial reports.
The latest activity was unchanged from August — which CoreLogic revised up from 48,000 originally reported.
A revised 84,000 foreclosures were completed in the same month last year. CoreLogic originally reported just 57,000 completed foreclosures in the year-earlier period.
The current pace of repossessions is more than double the 21,000-per-month rate prior to 2007.
From Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, completed foreclosures amounted to 446,000.