Slow foreclosures drive New Jersey’s delinquency rate past Nevada’s

The state of New Jersey has surpassed Nevada in the rate of homeowners who have seriously delinquent loans in the second quarter of this year, Businessweek reported. Year-over-year, the rate in New Jersey rose 1.3 percentage points to a total of 12.7 percent. The state now has the second-highest serious delinquency rate in the nation trailing only Florida.

The high delinquency rate is partly because of a huge shadow inventory that’s spurred by the state’s slow foreclosure process. There are 60,000 foreclosures started since January 2008 that currently await resolution in the prolonged process, which takes an average of 934 days.

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A similar narrative is unfolding in other northeastern states, including New York, Connecticut, Maine and Pennsylvania. Shadow inventory is growing in these states and as of June 30, serious delinquencies rose 6 percent year-over-year in New York, Connecticut and Maryland. In Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., they rose 5 percent.

In addition, as The Real Deal reported, both New York and New Jersey ranked among the five states with the highest foreclosure inventory rate, defined by CoreLogic as the foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes. New Jersey came in second place with 5.7 percent, behind Florida, which ticked in at 11.2 percent. [Businessweek]