Tampa Bay mortgage delinquency rose at nation's third-fastest rate

The percentage of Tampa Bay homeowners seriously delinquent on their mortgages rose at the third-fastest rate in the country over the past year, indicating the foreclosure tidal wave isn't subsiding yet.

About 19.6 percent of bay area homeowners — roughly one in five — were either 90-plus days delinquent in their mortgage or in foreclosure as of June, according to an analysis released Tuesday. That's up from 15.7 percent in June 2009.

That rate of growth in Tampa Bay's foreclosure pipeline trails only Las Vegas and Miami-Fort Lauderdale out of 366 metro areas tracked in the report.

The Foreclosure-Response.org analysis was done in collaboration by three groups: Local Initiatives Support Corp., the Urban Institute and the Center for Housing Policy. Their conclusions, at least with respect to Tampa Bay and Florida, were not encouraging:

• Nine out of the top 10 and 15 out of the top 25 metro areas with the highest serious delinquency rates in June were in Florida.

• Of the 25 metro areas with the biggest growth in serious delinquency rates over the year, 11 were in Florida.

• In the Miami metro area — the area with the highest serious delinquency rate — 25.6 percent of mortgages were seriously delinquent in June, up 4.3 percentage points over the year. Tampa's delinquency rate was eighth highest in the country.

"This suggests that foreclosure problems in Florida have not yet stabilized," the report concluded.

All told, some 400,000 foreclosure cases are pending statewide.

Florida has been slower than many states in working through its foreclosure backlog in part because state law allows a lengthy court procedure.

The new report is pegged to June numbers, so it does not reflect a late summer improvement.

In August, Florida showed signs of working through its problems with fewer new foreclosure filings and a jump in bank takebacks, the final foreclosure step.

The state's foreclosure courts got bogged down this fall, however, amid an inquiry into whether attorneys working for banks filed faulty and fraudulent foreclosure documents.

The robo-signing controversy spurred some lenders to impose a temporary moratorium on moving foreclosures through the court while simultaneously prompting judges and homeowners' attorneys to scrutinize paperwork more closely looking for errors.

Jeff Harrington can be reached at jharrington@sptimes.com.