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LPS Applied Analytics recently released their mortgage performance data. Delinquencies increased slightly in April but are down almost 10% on the year and over 25% from the delinquency peak in January 2010. Improvement continues in the pipeline for early stage or newly delinquent loans. The inventory for those loans has dropped to 3 year lows. Even as the overall foreclosure pipeline remains bloated, these are positive signs for the housing recovery. According to LPS, 12.11% of owner occupied mortgages are delinquent or in foreclosure. The numbers break down like this:

2.24 million loans less than 90 days delinquent

1.96 million loans 90+ days delinquent

2.18 million loans in the foreclosure process

6.39 million total loans are delinquent or currently in foreclosure as of April

When will these properties come available you might ask? The answer isn’t clear at the moment. Lenders have, through a variety of ways, slowed the supply of available foreclosures. There have been moratoriums on foreclosures due to lender ineptitude with many overwhelmed by the sheer volume of properties now on their books. Lenders are also trying to avoid dumping too much supply on the market as it would devalue their inventory and create even steeper losses. It looks to this Troll that the supply will be brought to the market evenly over a long period of time.

The good news locally is the overall foreclosure inventory is not nearly as severe in the Pacific Northwest. Great deals are out there with short sales and the chances of them seriously tanking our market are increasingly slim.

The Troll