According to the Mortgage Monitor for July (pdf) from Black Knight Financial Services (BKFS, formerly the LPS Data & Analytics division), 935,460 home mortgages, or 1.85% of all mortgages outstanding, remained in the foreclosure process at the end of July, which was down from 951,384, or 1.91% of all active loans that were in foreclosure at the end of June, and down from 2.82% of all mortgages in July of last year.  These are homeowners who had a foreclosure notice served but whose homes had not yet been seized, and July's so-called "foreclosure inventory" was the lowest percentage of homes in foreclosure since March of 2008.  However, new foreclosure starts rose in July for the third month in a row, as the 90,690 homes foreclosed on in July was 2.7% higher than the 88,314 foreclosures started in June and 15.1% over the 78,796 foreclosures started in April. Nonetheless, new foreclosures are still well off the pace of last year, as year-to-date foreclosure starts were at their lowest since 2008 and down 13.43% from a year ago...

In addition to homes in foreclosure, July data showed that 2,849,000​ mortgage loans, or 5.64% of all mortgages, were at least one mortgage payment overdue but not in foreclosure, down 1.1% from 5.70% of homeowners with a mortgage who were more than 30 days behind in June, and down from the delinquency rate of 6.41% a year earlier. Of those who were delinquent in July, 1,136,000 home owners were considered seriously delinquent, which means they were 90 or more days behind on mortgage payments, but not in foreclosure at the end of the month. Thus, a total of 7.49% of homeowners with a mortgage were either late in paying or in foreclosure at the end of July, and 4.10% of them were in serious trouble, ie, either "seriously delinquent" or already in foreclosure...

The graph below, from page 4 of the Mortgage Monitor pdf, shows the percentage of mortgages that were in the foreclosure process monthly since 1995 in green, the percentage of active home loans that were delinquent but not in foreclosure over the same period in red, and the total of both, representing total percentage of mortgages that were in some kind of mortgage trouble each month, in blue over the same period.  We can see that the percentage of homes in foreclosure in green has been falling fairly steadily over the last two years and at 1.85% in July is now well below the October 2011 peak of 4.29% of mortgages in the foreclosure process…But notice that's still more than 4 times the pre-crisis foreclosure inventory of 0.44% from December 2005 that’s highlighted on the graph, so the percentage of homes in foreclosure is still a long way from normal.  Similarly, with delinquent mortgages shown in red at 5.64% of all mortgage outstanding in July, that count is down to almost half of the 10.57% of all mortgages that were delinquent but not in foreclosure at the peak of the mortgage crisis in January of 2010, but still somewhat above the December 2005 mortgage delinquency percentage of 4.27% noted on the graph. Note also the seasonality of mortgage delinquencies apparent in the track of the red graph below, wherein they usually begin to increase at the beginning of the school year and peak during the holidays, and then decline at the beginning of the year as homeowners catch up on all their bills after holiday shopping...

The next graph below, from page 7 of the Mortgage Monitor pdf, shows the historical track of the number of foreclosure starts monthly since the beginning of 2008 in red, and the track of the number of mortgages that have transitioned into 90 day delinquencies each month over the same time frame. As we mentioned earlier and as is obvious on the chart, the number of foreclosure starts has gone up over the last 3 months; similarly, the number of new 90 day defaults has now increased for four months in a row. Note the callout on the graph, where BKFS tells us 53% of new foreclosure starts are now repeats, where a homeowner had previously resolved a foreclosure, presumably by catching up on payments or through a mortgage modification, only to fall behind on payments and be foreclosed on again. Also note that 79% of foreclosure starts in July were on mortgages originating in 2008 or earlier, as were 74% of the new 90 day defaults...

The next graph, from page 8 of the mortgage monitor, is a color-coded representation of the year of origination for the 90 day delinquent mortgages in each of several larger states, as well as for the US as a whole. Within each bar representing the entirety of the 90 day delinquent mortgages in a state, the top virtually invisible light blue band represents the percentage of 90 day delinquent mortgages that originated this year; that’s followed by the orange band, which represents the percentage of 90 day delinquent mortgages that originated last year (2013), followed by teal blue for 2012, purple for 2011, green for 2010, red for 2009, and dark blue for the percentage of 90 day delinquent mortgages that originated prior to 2008, which obviously represents the majority of the seriously delinquent mortgages...

Next we'll include the updated table that shows the breakdown of non-current mortgages by state, taken from page 24 of the pdf. Shown below for each state and the District of Columbia are the percentage of home loans that were delinquent (Del%) in July, the percentage of mortgages that are in the foreclosure process (FC%), the total mortgages that weren't current with their payments (NonCurr%) and the year over year change in the number of non-current mortgages. Note that states that have a judicial foreclosure process, where the bank must prove their right to foreclose on a homeowner in court, are marked by a red asterisk, and BKFS gives this as a reason that foreclosures have been taking so long.. There are now only 4 states that still have more than 4% of their mortgaged homes in the foreclosure process, and all are judicial states: New Jersey at 6.1%, Florida with 4.8%, New York with 4.6%, and Hawaii with 4.1% of their homes with mortgages in foreclosure..

For an overview of how this foreclosure crisis has played out from the beginning, we’ll also include below, from page 25 of the pdf, a portion of the Mortgage Monitor table showing the monthly count of active home mortgage loans and their delinquency status.  The columns here show the total active mortgage loan count nationally for each month given, number of mortgages that were delinquent by more than 90 days but not yet in foreclosure, the monthly count of those mortgages in the foreclosure process (FC), the total non-current mortgages, including those that just missed one or two payments, and then the number of foreclosure starts for each month shown going back to January 2008.  In the last two columns, we see the average length of time those who’ve been more than 90 days delinquent have remained in their homes without foreclosure, and then the average number of days those in foreclosure have been stuck in that process because of the lengthy foreclosure pipelines. Notice that although the total counts of both mortgages that are seriously delinquent and those that are in foreclosure has been falling over the past year & a half, the average length of time for those who have been more than 90 days delinquent without foreclosure remains at 501 days, while the average time for those who’ve been in foreclosure without a resolution has lengthened to a record average 1001 days...

(above excerpted from my weekly summary at MarketWatch 666)