Delinquent Borrowers Keep Homes a Year in Judicial States

Nearly half of all seriously delinquent borrowers have stayed in their homes more than a year in judicial states, which have developed a serious backlog of pre-foreclosures, according to June data from LPS Analytics.

The data suggests that delinquent borrowers are taking advantage of slower processing in judicial states by not paying mortgages long after they are overdue without suffering foreclosure.

On a month-over-month basis, the national delinquency rate for loans 90 or more days delinquent remained stable, but after months of tracking very closely, LPS reported that the rate in judicial foreclosure states is now higher than in non-judicial.

The share of aged inventory is higher in judicial states as well, with nearly 50 percent of borrowers with loans 90 or more days delinquent not having made a payment in more than one year, as compared to just slightly more than 40 percent in non-judicial states. Further, nearly 60 percent of borrowers with loans in foreclosure in judicial states had not made a payment in at least two years, as of June.

LPS’s June data also shows that the rate of new problem loans entering the delinquency pipeline remained stable at multi-year lows; late-stage delinquencies have also shown improvement over the last year, dropping more than seven percent.

LPS also reported that three of the five states with highest percentage of non-current loans are judicial states: Florida, New Jersey and Illinois.