3.7% of home mortgages were in some stage of delinquency as of October 2019, according to the latest CoreLogic Loan Performance Insights Report [1]. Defaults are down from 4.1% year-over-year, and the lowest for the month of October in more than 20 years, however, at the more volatile metro level, delinquencies are increasing for a few cities.
“National foreclosure and serious delinquency rates have remained fixed at record lows for at least the last six months," said Frank Martell, President and CEO of CoreLogic. "However, as markets can be much more volatile at the metro level, both late-stage delinquencies and foreclosures have continued to increase at this level in the Midwest and Southern regions of the country.”
These Midwestern and Southern cities included Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Dubuque, Iowa; and Rockford, Illinois, which all posted annual increases in overall delinquency rates in October 2019.
At the state level, the default rate was highest in Mississippi at 7.3% and lowest in Colorado at 1.7%, though no states posted annual gains in their overall delinquency rate in October 2019. The states that logged the largest annual decreases included North Carolina (down 0.9 percentage points) and Mississippi (down 0.8 percentage points). Eight other states followed with annual decreases of 0.6 percentage points.
The serious delinquency rate, or loans 90 days or more past due, including loans in foreclosure, was 1.3% in October 2019, down from 1.5% in October 2018. The serious delinquency rate has stood at 1.3% since April 2019. The foreclosure inventory rate was 0.4% in October 2019, down from 0.5% a year earlier.
The share of early-stage delinquencies, or mortgages that were 30 to 59 days past due, was 1.8% in October 2019, down from 1.9% in October 2018. The share of mortgages 60 to 89 days past due was 0.6% in October 2019, down from 0.7% in October 2018.
CoreLogic also tracks the rate at which mortgages transition from one stage of delinquency to the next, such as going from current to 30 days past due. In October 2019 the current to 30-day transition rate remained well below levels during the housing crisis. The October current- to 30-day rate was 0.7%, unchanged from a year earlier. The 30- to 60-day transition rate was 15.2% in October, up from 13.3% in October 2018, and the 60- to 90-day transition rate was 24.5% in October, up from 23.8% a year earlier.