Chance Gates' Blog

Almost 10 percent of all mortgages on one- to four-unit properties are in some stage of foreclosure, up from 2.65 percent a year ago on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Delinquency Survey released Thursday.

The combined percentage of loans in foreclosure or at least one payment past due was 14.41 percent on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the highest ever recorded in an MBA delinquency survey.

“My prediction is we’ll probably recover on a seasonal basis,” Robert Toll, chairman and CEO of Toll Brothers, the largest builder of luxury houses, said yesterday at a conference in New York sponsored by Citigroup Inc. “It’s generally accepted that the homebuilding industry is off the mat and on the road to recovery.”

Josh Levin, a housing analyst at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York, said he expects sales to continue to be slow until January or early February, followed by a surge as buyers try to beat the April 30 expiration of the tax credit.

Source: Mortgage Bankers Association (11/19/2009) and Bloomberg, Kathleen M. Howley and John Gittelsohn (11/20/2009)