by Calculated Risk on 3/21/2012 09:00:00 AM

LPS released their First Look report for February today. LPS reported that the percent of loans delinquent declined in February from January. However the percent of loans in the foreclosure process only declined slightly.

LPS reported the U.S. mortgage delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure) declined to 7.57% from 7.97% in January. This is the lowest delinquency rate since 2008; however the percent of delinquent loans is still way above the normal rate of around 4.5% to 5%. The percent of delinquent loans peaked at 10.97%, so delinquencies have fallen a little more than halfway back to normal.

The following table shows the LPS numbers for February 2012, and also for last month (Jan 2012) and one year ago (Feb 2012).

LPS: Loans Delinquent and in Foreclosure
	Feb-12	Jan-12	Feb-11
Delinquent	7.57%	7.97%	8.80%
In Foreclosure	4.13%	4.15%	4.15%
Less than 90 days	2,059,000	2,226,000	2,495,000
More than 90 days	1,722,000	1,772,000	2,165,000
In foreclosure	2,065,000	2,084,000	2,196,000
Total	5,846,000	6,082,000	6,856,000

Note that the number of loans in the foreclosure process has only declined slightly year-over-year. This remains far above the "normal" level of around 0.5%.