After seeing a spike in September, mortgage delinquencies declined 8.2 percent in October and nearly 18 percent from the same period last year, according to the Black Knight [1] First Look report released on Tuesday. The report indicated that there were 165,000 fewer past due loans in October than the previous month. Serious delinquencies, the report said, hit a 12-year low after falling by 14,000 from September and 90,000 on a year-over-year basis.
The strong year-over-year improvements were also driven by a continued improvement in delinquencies related to the spike seen after hurricanes Harvey and Irma last year, the Black Knight report said.
While foreclosure starts saw a month-over-month increase at 50,600 increasing 26.5 percent over September, the report indicated that these increases were coming off September's nearly 18-year low. Despite the uptick, the number of loans in active foreclosures fell 24 percent from the same period last year, with the report highlighting that only 267,000 loans remained in active foreclosure during October, falling by 1,000 from September and by 81,000 from October 2017.
The surprising data, the report found, was for mortgage prepays, which increased 14 percent from September. However, they remained 29 percent below last year's level.
While the number of properties that were 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure declined by 165,000 to approximately 1.8 million, those that were 90 or more days past due but not in foreclosure declined by 14,000 to 499,000 properties.
Mississippi continued to lead the states with the highest percentage of non-current loans, followed by Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia, and Arkansas. North Dakota, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado were among the states with the least non-current loans.
With 2.94 percent of its overall loans in the 90 plus days delinquent list, Mississippi also topped the five states with 90 plus days delinquent percentage, followed by Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
Florida led the top five states by 6-month improvement in non-current percentage with a decline of 28.92 percent, followed by Alaska, Oregon, Texas, and New Jersey.