New report shows that the Southwest is showing strong recovery from the 2018 hurricane season
The national rate of mortgages in some stage of delinquency (30+ days past due or in foreclosure) was 3.9% in November, the latest month of data released by CoreLogic.
Its Loan Performance Insights Report reveals a 0.1 percentage point decrease year-over-year while the foreclosure inventory rate was 0.4%, unchanged from November 2018, and matching the prior 12 months as the lowest for any month since at least January 1999.
There was, however, a slight increase in the share of mortgages that transitioned from current to 30+ days past due – from 0.8% in November 2018 to 1% in November 2019.
Improvement for disaster-hit states
No states posted an annual increase in delinquency rate while the states with the largest decreases were North Carolina (down 0.7 percentage points) and District of Columbia (down 0.5 percentage points).
At a metro level, 50 areas recorded at least a small annual increase in overall delinquency rate with Pine Bluff, Arkansas (up 1.4 percentage points); Enid, Oklahoma (up 0.9 percentage points); Dalton, Georgia (up 0.6 percentage points); and Dubuque, Iowa (up 0.5 percentage points) posting the largest increases.
“Overall delinquency rates remain at 20-year lows spurred on by tight underwriting standards following the onset of the Great Recession, a robust and accelerating economic cycle over the past five years and the increasing underlying health of the housing economy,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “In the Southeast, the 2018 hurricane season left higher overall delinquency rates in its wake, but the region is finally on the mend. In the Midwest, we see a somewhat different picture. Of the 50 metro areas that experienced increases in overall delinquency rates in November, nearly half were in the Midwest. Still, as mortgage rates reach a three-year low, we could expect to see stabilization across markets heading into 2020.”
