""Lender Processing Services"":http://www.lpsvcs.com/Pages/default.aspx (LPS) offered preliminary data on mortgage performance in December, revealing foreclosure inventory and delinquency rates were both down year-over-year.
[IMAGE] [COLUMN_BREAK]The foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate fell to 3.4 percent in December. The figure represents a 2 percent decrease from November and an 18 percent drop from December 2011.
The delinquency rate, or loans past due 30 or more days, stood at 7.2 percent at the end of December, which is a slight 0.7 percent increase from November and a 9.1 percent decrease from a year ago.
Overall, LPS found there are about 5.3 million loans that are not current, or at least 30 days or more past due or in foreclosure. Of that total, about 1.7 million loans are in foreclosure inventory and another 3.6 million loans are at least 30-day delinquencies but not foreclosures.
LPS also found the states with the highest percentage of non-current loans are Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada, and New York. The states with the lowest percentage of loans that are past due are Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
The data represents about 70 percent of the overall market.