by Calculated Risk on 1/11/2016 09:01:00 AM

Black Knight Financial Services (BKFS) released their Mortgage Monitor report for November today. According to BKFS, 4.92% of mortgages were delinquent in November, up from 4.77% in October. BKFS reported that 1.38% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process.

This gives a total of 6.30% delinquent or in foreclosure.

Press Release: Black Knight’s November Mortgage Monitor: Refinanceable Population Shrinks While Tappable Equity Rises; HELOC Originations Continue to Climb

Today, the Data & Analytics division of Black Knight Financial Services, Inc. (NYSE: BKFS) released its latest Mortgage Monitor Report, based on data as of the end of November 2015. This month, Black Knight revisited the population of refinanceable borrowers and found that approximately 5.2 million borrowers could likely both qualify for and benefit from refinancing at today’s interest rates. However, as Black Knight Data & Analytics Senior Vice President Ben Graboske explained, this population is diminishing, and as mortgage interest rates rise, it will only continue to shrink further.

“Looking at current interest rates on existing 30-year mortgages and applying a set of broad-based underwriting criteria, we found that there are still approximately 5.2 million borrowers that make good candidates for traditional refinancing,” said Graboske. “Of course, that’s down from over 7 million as recently as April 2015, when interest rates were below 3.7 percent. If rates go up 50 basis points from where they are now, 2.1 million borrowers will fall out of the running; a 100-basis-point increase would eliminate another million, leaving only 2 million potential refinance candidates, the lowest population of refinance candidates in recent history. That said, of those that could likely qualify for and benefit from refinancing today, some 2.4 million are looking at potentially saving $200 or more on their monthly mortgage payments post-refinancing. Again, this is a very rate-sensitive population: after a 50-basis-point rise in rates, a million borrowers would lose out on those savings.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph from Black Knight shows the first time foreclosure starts since 2005.

From Black Knight:

Looking more closely at November’s foreclosure starts, we see that the month’s 31,000 first time foreclosure starts were the lowest in over 10 years

In fact, the lowest number of foreclosure starts seen in 2005 (when Black Knight began tracking this data) was 37,700 in January – so not only are we back to pre-crisis levels, but November was 18 percent below the lowest level of first time foreclosure starts in all of 2005

Likewise, repeat foreclosures were at their lowest level since April of 2008

There is much more in the mortgage monitor.