LPS: More Than 7M Mortgages Are Delinquent or in Foreclosure

There are 7,043,000 mortgages in the United States that are at least 30 days past due or in the process of foreclosure, according to ""Lender Processing Services"":http://www.lpsvcs.com (LPS).

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The company provided the media with a sneak peek at its October month-end mortgage performance data this week. The numbers show the nation's delinquency rate was virtually unchanged from the previous month's reading, but foreclosures are on the rise.

Of the more than 7 million home loans in the country going unpaid, 2,090,000 have been referred to an attorney for foreclosure, LPS says. Another 4,953,000 are 30 or more days delinquent but not yet in foreclosure, with 2,238,000 of these at least 90 days overdue.

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Based on LPS' calculations, the nation's total mortgage delinquency rate â€" which includes loans at least a month past due but not yet pushed to foreclosure â€" stood at 9.29 percent as of the end of October.

That figure is up a nominal 0.1 percent compared to the previous month and down 8.4 percent from October 2009.

LPS calculates the foreclosure inventory rate based on loans that have been referred to a foreclosure attorney but have not yet reached the final stage of foreclosure sale. That rate was 3.92 percent at the end of October.

The foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate rose 2.1 percent from September and is up 5.2 percent year-over-year in LPS' study.

The company's data show the states with the highest percentage of non-current loans (defined as the total number of foreclosures and delinquencies as a percent of all active loans in that state) include: Florida, Nevada, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, and New Jersey.

The lowest percentage of non-current loans can be found in: Montana, Wyoming, Arkansas, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

LPS' analysis is based on details pulled from its loan-level database of nearly 40 million mortgages. The company plans to provide a more in-depth review of this data in its October _Mortgage Monitor_ report, scheduled for release November 22.