Almost 14 percent of Illinois homeowners with a mortgage were behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of the second quarter, up from about 9 percent at the same time last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Assn.
As of June 30, 9.2 percent of mortgages in Illinois were past due and 4.7 percent were in foreclosure, according to the association’s second-quarter National Delinquency Survey, released Thursday.
The numbers are similar to those nationwide. In the U.S., 4.3 percent of borrowers were in foreclosure and 8.9 percent had missed at least one payment, according to the survey.
The Illinois figures marked sharp increases from last year — 6 percent of mortgages were late and 3.1 percent were in foreclosure in the state at the end of the second quarter of 2008, according to the association.
Nationwide, 6.2 percent of mortgages were late and 2.75 percent were in foreclosure at the end of second-quarter 2008.
The record-high numbers in Thursday’s report are being driven by borrowers with traditional fixed-rate mortgages, rather than the shady subprime loans with adjustable rates that kicked off the mortgage crisis.
One in three new foreclosures nationwide between April and June was from a prime, fixed-rate loan, up from one in five a year earlier. Last year, subprime adjustable-rate loans caused the largest share of foreclosures.
The worst of the trouble is still concentrated in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, which accounted for 44 percent of new foreclosures in the country. Nearly 12 percent of all loans in Florida were in foreclosure, the highest in the country, followed by Nevada at 9 percent.
"Clearly we have not seen the bottom in Florida," said Jay Brinkmann, the trade group's chief economist.
President Barack Obama has pledged to fight the problem, but its foreclosure prevention program, known as "Making Home Affordable," is off to a disappointing start. As of July, only about one in 10 of eligible borrowers had signed up.
The success of the program depends on the economy stabilizing. The number of first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly for the second straight week, the Labor Department said Thursday.
The number of new jobless claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 576,000 last week, from a revised figure of 561,000. Wall Street economists expected a drop to 550,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
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