The threat of a foreclosure can make you feel terrible and like you’re losing the place you call your own, but you may be surprised to hear that delinquency mortgages in Texas have been as high as one percent recently. What does that mean to you? It means that around 39,000 foreclosures were completed in all of Texas in 2013, which makes Texas the number 4 state on the National Foreclosure Report from CoreLogic.
According to the story from Feb. 10, by the end of Dec. 2013, one percent of all mortgages left outstanding in Texas were considered to be in serious delinquency. Serious delinquency occurs when home owners have not paid their mortgage payments for 90 days or longer. In the United States, the average percentage of homes in serious delinquency is 2.1. While Texas may be doing better than some areas, the housing market is still following national trends.
When considering deeply underwater mortgages, which are mortgages where the loan-to-value ratio is 125 percent or higher, a homeowner could be left owing 25 percent or more on their home than it’s worth. In Texas, around 11 percent of homes were considered deeply underwater in Dec. 2013. That’s about 400,617 homes. In the U.S., that number is an astonishing 9.3 million residential properties. However many that seems, it’s actually a decrease from the 10.9 million homes deeply underwater in Jan. 2013, according to the story.
Much of the loan-to-value ratio problem came about during the downturn of the U.S. housing market. When homes lost their values, even selling wouldn’t result in getting out of debt. For some, that means foreclosure, but there are options for each individual case.
Source:Go Banking Rates, “Texas Among Top 5 States for Completed Foreclosures” Amanda Garcia, Feb. 10, 2014
