Serious delinquencies (90 days or more past due) increased in December due to the effects of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, which struck Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, respectively, this past August and September, Black Knight’s First Look report shows.
An additional 60,000 mortgages became 90 days or more past due in December, driven by both continued hurricane-related fallout as well as seasonal and calendar-related pressures, the software, data and analytics firm reports.
As of the end of December, about 142,700 mortgages were seriously delinquent due to Harvey and Irma alone. That was about 20% of all serious delinquencies nationwide.
About 102,500 of those seriously delinquent loans can be attributed to Hurricane Irma, while another 40,200 are the result of Hurricane Harvey.
Nationwide, the national mortgage delinquency rate (30 days or more past due) as of the end of December stood at about 4.71%, an increase of 3.47% compared with November and an increase of 6.54% compared with December 2016.
About 2.4 million properties were 30 days or more past due, up by about 88,000 compared with November and up 164,000 compared with December 2016.
About 726,000 properties were 90 days or more past due, up 60,000 compared with November and up 44,000 compared with a year earlier.
The U.S. pre-sale foreclosure inventory rate stood at about 0.65%, a decrease of 2.22% compared with November and a decrease of 31.92% compared with December 2016.
As of the end of December there were about 331,000 residential properties in the foreclosure inventory, a decrease of about 6,000 compared with the previous month and a decrease of about 152,000 compared with a year earlier.
There were about 44,500 foreclosure starts in December – down 6.90% compared with November and down 25.46% compared with December 2016.
The monthly prepayment rate stood at about 0.93%, down 5.57% compared with the previous month and down 31.53% compared with as year earlier.
According to the report, the increase in delinquencies in Florida due to the storms pushed that state over Mississippi in December, in terms of the share of seriously delinquent mortgages.
The impact from the storms pushed the overall delinquency rate to the highest level since early 2016.
