Mortgage Delinquencies Decline in November; Remain High in Hurricane-Affected Areas

The share of home mortgage loan payments that are 30 days or more past due fell from 5.2% in November 2016 to 5.1% in November 2017. The foreclosure inventory rate fell from 0.8% to 0.6% in the same period.

The share of mortgages that transitioned from current to 30 days past due was 1.0% in November 2017, flat compared with October 2016. This year’s rate is slightly lower than the transition rate of 1.2% just before the housing crisis struck and well below the peak rate of 2.0% in November 2008.

The data were reported Tuesday by CoreLogic in its Loan Performance Insights report. Early-stage delinquencies, defined as 30 to 59 days past due, remained flat year over year in November 2017 at 2.2%. The share of mortgages that were 60 to 89 days past due in November 2017 was 0.9%, an increase of 0.2 points compared with last year’s rate. According to CoreLogic, measuring early-stage delinquency rates is important for analyzing the health of the mortgage market.

CoreLogic’s chief economist, Dr. Frank Nothaft, said:

The effects of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria appear clearly in our mortgage delinquency report. Serious delinquency rates are up sharply in Texas and Florida compared with a year ago, while lower in all other states except Alaska. In Puerto Rico, the serious delinquency rate jumped to 6.3 percent in November, up 2.7 percentage points compared with a year before. In the Miami metropolitan area, serious delinquency was up more than one-third from one year earlier to 5.1 percent, and it more than doubled to 4.6 percent in the Houston area.

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Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic, added:

Transition rates for 60-day and 90-day delinquency, while stable across most of the country, were up sharply in many areas impacted by the 2017 hurricanes. In many of the harder-hit regions, such as the Houston and Miami metropolitan areas, housing stock availability has taken a hit as many homes were damaged and are no longer habitable. As a result, we expect to see further upward pressure on prices and rents for habitable homes, which will continue to erode affordability.

The states with the lowest 30-plus delinquency rate in November 2017 were North Dakota and Colorado (2.1%); Oregon (2.4%); Montana and Washington (2.5%); and South Dakota and Utah (2.7%). The 30-plus delinquency rate was highest in Florida (9.9%), Mississippi (8.8%), Louisiana (8.1%), New York (6.9%) and New Jersey (6.8%).

Selected metro areas with the highest 30-plus delinquency rates in October were Miami (12.7%), Houston (10.3%) and New York City (6.1%). Selected metro areas with the lowest rates were San Francisco (1.7%), Denver (2.0%) and Los Angeles (2.9%).

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