Monthly Mortgage Performance Improves

As of Jan. 31, delinquency of at least 30 days, including foreclosures, on U.S. first-lien single family loans worked out to 4.9 percent.

Delinquency improved from the final month of last year, when it was 5.3 percent, and from the first month of last year, when the rate was 5.1 percent.

CoreLogic Inc. reported the performance metrics.

At 8.8 percent, Mississippi most recently had the worst rate of delinquency. Florida followed at 8.4 percent, then Louisiana’s 8.1 percent, New York’s 6.7 percent and Alabama’s 6.5 percent.

Colorado had the lowest rate: 2.0 percent.

U.S. delinquency of at least 90 days was unchanged from December 2017 at 2.1 percent but has improved from 2.3 percent in January 2017.

The foreclosure inventory rate
remained at 0.6 percent and was less than 0.8 percent a year previous.

“The areas hit by last year’s hurricanes and wildfires are experiencing the ‘pig in a python’ effect on their local delinquency rates” CoreLogic Chief Economist Dr. Frank Nothaft said in the report. “Early-stage delinquencies have largely dropped back to normal, while serious delinquency remains elevated. In hard-hit markets, like the Houston and Naples metro areas, serious delinquency is triple what it was before the hurricanes.”

But CoreLogic President and Chief Executive Officer Frank Martell noted that delinquency and foreclosure rates have improved over the past year outside areas impacted by the hurricanes.

“Declines in the unemployment rate have supported a rise in income, and home-price growth has built home equity,” Martell said. “These two economic forces coupled with high-quality underwriting have lowered overall delinquency rates.”

In New York, the foreclosure rate as of January 2018 was 1.9 percent — the highest in the nation. Next was New Jersey’s 1.4 percent, then Maine’s 1.3 percent, Hawaii’s 1.1 percent and Washington, D.C.’s, 1.0 percent.