It has been nearly a decade since the Bay Area market started to rebound from the recession with an appreciation in prices. Agents in this market are now noticing a key trend: Delinquencies for home loans continue to fall.
In fact, nationwide delinquency rates have dropped nearly a full percentage point.
With the foreclosure nightmare in the rear-view mirror, in the San Jose metropolitan area only 1.4 percent of mortgages were delinquent by at least 30 days in July, compared with 1.7 percent a year earlier. The share of “seriously delinquent” mortgages — at least 90 days past due — fell from 0.7 percent in July 2016 to 0.5 percent in July 2017, according to data from CoreLogic.
The real estate information service also reported that in the San Francisco metropolitan area, 1.8 percent of home loans were in the early stages of delinquency — at least 30 days overdue — in July, down from 2.1 percent the previous year.
“The whole Bay Area is now well below the national figure for foreclosures,” said Frank Nothaft, CoreLogic’s chief economist said in a statement, “and that is because the local economy is very good, unemployment is very low and incomes are rising — which means most families have the income coming in to enable them to stay current on their mortgage.”
Moreover, with prices rising and a median sales price for a single-family home more than $1 million, homeowners are building equity — equity witch they don’t want to lose.
Nationally, according to the new CoreLogic report, the share of delinquencies overdue by 30-59 days fell from 2.3 percent in July 2016 to 2 percent in July 2017.
Since early-stage delinquencies can be volatile, CoreLogic also analyzes transition rates.
The share of mortgages that transitioned from current to 30-days past due was 0.9 percent in July 2017, down from 1.1 percent in July 2016. By comparison, in January 2007 just before the start of the financial crisis, the current-to-30-day transition rate was 1.2 percent and it peaked in November 2008 at 2 percent.
Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic, noted in a statement that there are some worrisome trends nationwide.
“For example,” he said, “markets affected by the decline in oil production or anemic job creation have seen an increase in defaults. We see this in markets such as Anchorage, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Louisiana, where the serious delinquency rate rose over the last year.”
