U.S. home foreclosures reach record high
Julie HavivNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. home foreclosures and therate of homes entering foreclosure rose to record highs in thesecond quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said onFriday.
"The national foreclosure numbers continue to be driven bythe hardest-hit states continuing to get much worse," JayBrinkmann, the association's chief economist and senior vicepresident for research and economics, said in a news release.
The increases in foreclosures in California and Floridaoverwhelmed improvements in states such as Texas, Massachusettsand Maryland, he said.
For the quarter, a majority of the states saw relativelylittle change one way or the other, with California and Floridaalone accounting for 39 percent of all of the foreclosuresstarted in the country during the second quarter and 73 percentof the increase in foreclosures between the first and secondquarters, he said.
The seasonally adjusted foreclosure starts rate, thepercentage of loans that entered the foreclosure process duringthe April-June quarter, was 1.19 percent, up from 0.99 percentin the first three months of 2008 and 0.65 percent in thesecond quarter of 2007.
The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at theend of the second quarter was 2.75 percent, up from 2.47percent in the first quarter and from 1.40 percent in thesecond quarter of 2007.
The U.S. mortgage delinquency rate of 6.41 percent was thehighest since at least 1979, which was when the trade groupbegan its current method of measuring failing home loans.
The increase in the overall delinquency rate was driven byincreases in the number of loans 90 or more days past due,primarily in California and Florida. The 30-day delinquencypercentage remains below levels seen as recently as 2002, theMBA said. (Editing by Jonathan Oatis)