The foreclosure inventory rate is down almost 30% from last year and 26% from the beginning of 2013 as the housing market stabilizes and fewer homes fall into a state of distress, Lender Processing Services (LPS) said Friday.
The company's First Look Mortgage Report from LPS found that the loan delinquency rate fell 2.8% from the prior report to 6.28% in October.
Additionally, after 18 months of continuous decline, the inventory tumbled to its lowest level since the end of 2008 and fell to 1.28 million loans, or just 2.54% of currently active mortgages.
In its mortgage report, LPS took a closer look at loan level data from its database, examining 70% of the overall mortgage market.
Meanwhile, year-over-year delinquencies dropped 10.69% from October 2012.
The total foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate continued to mend and hit 2.54%, declining 3.23% month-over-month and 29.61% year-over-year.
A spokesperson for LPS noted that while delinquencies are down 2.8% from last month they are not quite at the lows witnessed back in April (6.21%), May (6.08%) or August (6.20%), but they are heading in that direction.
Furthermore, the number of properties 30 or more days past due dipped to 3.152 million, while the number of properties 90 or more days late fell slightly to 1.283 million.
As a whole, the total pipeline of delinquent loans or properties in foreclosure hit 4.43 million.
"Looking at the state-by-state breakdown, Mississippi has overtaken Florida in terms of the largest population of non-current loans, at 15.1% (which correlates to a delinquency rate of 13% – the highest in the nation by far – and a 2.1% foreclosure rate),” LPS added.
Mississippi, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Louisiana are the states with the highest percentage of non-current loans.
On the other end of the spectrum, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas and North Dakota ranked as the states with the lowest percentage of non-current mortgages.
