Mortgage delinquencies slipped below 5% for the first time since the pandemic began and are on pace to return to pre-COVID levels by year-end, Black Knight's First Look report noted.
"As the economy gets back on track, we're churning through a lot of the distressed inventory of mortgages," a Black Knight representative said in an email. "At the current rate of improvement, overall delinquencies should be back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021."
Loans that are 30 days or more late on their payment, but are not yet in foreclosure fell to 4.66% for April, compared with 5.02%
April's 7.1% decline in the 30-day late inventory follows a decline of 16.4% in March.
April ended with 2.5 million properties for which the borrower was at least 30 days or more late on their payment but not in foreclosure. That is down by 172,000 compared with March and 900,000 from April 2020.
The subset of properties 90 days late or more but not in foreclosure made up nearly 1.77 million of that total, down by 151,000 but up more than 1.3 million on a year-over-year basis.
The vast majority of those serious delinquent mortgages are in forbearance plans. Last week Black Knight's reported that 2.16 million were in forbearance.
In addition, there were 153,000 properties in the foreclosure presale inventory in April, a reduction of 9,000 from the previous month and 58,000 from April 2020.
There were 3,700 foreclosure starts during April, compared with 5,000 in March and 7,400 in April 2020. Foreclosure activity has been restricted for the past year due to
"As of right now it looks as though the end of the third quarter [and/or] beginning of the fourth quarter will be an inflection point in terms of our understanding of how the post-forbearance world will shake out," the Black Knight representative said. "Until then, all improvement is welcome news."
Meanwhile, because of the recent rise in mortgage rates that has
