The strides made by the ""Federal Housing Administration"":http://www.fha.gov (FHA) in lowering delinquency numbers are turning into a long-distance marathon run. The federal mortgage insurer's delinquency rate dropped again in June, marking the fifth straight month of declines.
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According to FHA's latest ""operations report"":http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/comp/rpts/ooe/olcurr.pdf, as of June 30, 532,757 of the mortgages it guarantees had spent at least 90 days in a delinquent status, which equates to a seriously delinquent rate of 8.3 percent.
That's down from 8.4 percent in May, and a significant slide from the 9.4 percent serious delinquency rate recorded during the first month of this year.
FHA says so far this fiscal year, it has paid 207,715 claims, of which 124,191 were for loss mitigation and 83,524 were for property conveyances.
[COLUMN_BREAK]New business at the federal agency improved in June compared to the previous month. FHA endorsed 150,911 mortgages for $26.4 billion, up from 124,754 endorsements for $22.3 billion in May.
June's transactions included 115,831 purchase money mortgages; 29,776 refinanced mortgages; and 5,304 reverse mortgages.
The refinance total consisted of 9,682 former FHA mortgages and 20,095 prior conventional mortgages. The federal agency's Home for Homeowners (H4H) program, however, still has a poor showing. Last month, seven H4H mortgages were insured, all former conventional loans.
Based on the number of new applications being processed, FHA will likely experience a slight slump in activity next month. In June, the agency received 168,915 applications for insurance, compared to 181,524 new applications submitted in May.
Based on the applications received, FHA says the seasonally adjusted annual rate is estimated to be 1,898,900, down 13 percent from last month and the lowest rate since January, when it was 1,691,500.
As of June 30, FHA had a total of 6,402,527 mortgages in force with an outstanding balance of $865.5 billion.