Serious mortgage delinquencies remain high as overall rate declines

Mortgage delinquencies are at a 10-month low, but the number of borrowers that have not made a payment in 90 days or longer remains five times higher than before the pandemic began, Black Knight said.

For January, 5.85% of outstanding mortgages were at least 30-days or more late on their payment, down from 6.08% in December. It was the first month that the delinquency rate was under 6% since March 2020, when it was at 3.39%. The delinquency rate does not include loans in foreclosure.

But the upcoming trouble for mortgage servicers can be seen in the still relatively high share of seriously delinquent borrowers. At the end of January, payments were 30 to 89 days late on just over 1 million properties, but there were 2.1 million properties for which a payment was 90 days or more past due.

"Recent forbearance and foreclosure moratorium extensions have reduced near-term risk, but at the same time may have the effect of extending the length of the recovery period," Black Knight said in its press release. "At the current rate of improvement, 1.8 million mortgages will still be seriously delinquent at the end of June when foreclosure moratoriums on government-backed loans are currently slated to lift."

For comparative purposes, back in March 2020, of the 1.8 million properties that were at least 30 days late on a payment, just 406,000 were 90 days or more delinquent, a record low.

In December, there were 3.25 million properties for which the mortgage hadn't been paid in at least 30 days, with 2.15 million past the 90-day mark.

But those moratoriums have resulted in continued declines in foreclosure starts. There were 5,900 foreclosure starts in January, down 16.9% from December and 86.2% from January 2020. The number of properties in the foreclosure pre-sale inventory slipped to 171,000 in January, down by 7,000 from December and 75,000 fewer units compared with January 2020.

As mortgage interest rates started rising in January, prepayment rates declined to 2.63%, down from 3.15% from December. But that was still more than 109% higher than January 2020's prepayment rate of 1.26%.