Late mortgages see quite the spike in June: Black Knight

While seasonal factors were attributed to the monthly rise in mortgage delinquencies for June, the jump was still much higher than last year's fairly steady increase, according to data from Black Knight.

June's total delinquency rate — mortgages at least 30 days late on a payment, but not yet in foreclosure — rose 10.8% from May to 3.73%. May's rate of 3.36% was the lowest since Black Knight started tracking this data.

Although this is just 0.2% lower than the June 2018 rate of 3.74%, the month-to-month change that year — also attributed to seasonal factors — was only 2.7%.

Besides those seasonal factors, another possible reason for the increase from May was that last month ended on a Sunday, which is not a day mortgage servicers process payments.

The total number of properties that are late or in foreclosure rose by 194,000 units from May to 2.21 million. On a year-over-year basis, the number declined by a scant 7,000.

That total includes a month-to-month gain of 190,000 units of properties that are one payment or more late on their mortgage to 1.95 million. A sign that these are newer defaults is seen in the drop in the number of seriously delinquent borrowers, defined as 90 or more days late but not yet in foreclosure, which fell by 6,000 from May and 93,000 from last June to 455,000.

That is the lowest level for serious delinquencies in 12 years, Black Knight said.

But the foreclosure presale inventory added 4,000 properties during the month to 259,000 units.

Even though mortgage rates remained low during June, and the number of refinance candidates rose by 2.3 million during the month, mortgage prepayment speeds fell for the first time in five months, to 1.15%. This is a 7.5% drop from May, although a 19.3% rise compared with June 2018.