Delinquencies, foreclosures continue to climb - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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Four states – Arizona, California and Nevada – drovd up the national numbers, accounting for about 46 percent of the foreclosure starts in the and representing 56 percent of the increase inforeclosurre starts, according to the MBA. Nevada had the highest overall delinquency rate acrossd all types of loansat 11.75 percent, followed by Mississippji at 11.7 percent and Florida at 10.67 The delinquency rate includes loans that are at leasy one payment past due, but does not include loanss in the process of foreclosure. Based on foreclosure inventory, the states with the highest rate s wereFlorida (10.56 percent), Nevadaz (7.83 percent) and Arizona (5.
56 percent) The number s are higher and are only expected to said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the MBA. “Thde rate of foreclosure starts remained essentially flat for the last three quarters of 2008, and we suspected that the numbers were artificiallg low due to various state and local moratoria, the and halt on and various company-level moratoria," Brinkmann said. However, he said, now that the guidelinez for theObama administration’x loan modifications are known, along with an increasde in the number of vacant homes with past due mortgages, “the pace of foreclosuress has stepped up considerably.
" There’ws also been a shift away from subprimee and adjustable rate mortgages to primew fixed-rate loans falling into The foreclosure rate on prime fixed-rate loans has doublesd in the last year, and, for the first time since the rapid growth of subprime lending, prime fixed-rate loans now represent the largestg share of new foreclosures. “More than anythingt else, this points to the impact of the recession and drops in employment onmortgage defaults,” Brinkmann said. Lookin g ahead, he said it doesn’t appear that the number of mortgagwe defaults will start to drop off until the employment situationgets better, and that isn’ expected until mid-2010.