WASHINGTON, DC-New data compiled by housing advocacy groups show that residential delinquencies, while varied across the nation’s metro areas, are still not noticeably abating. The report, drafted by Foreclosure-Response.org--a group formed by Local Initiatives Support Corp., the Urban Institute and the Center for Housing Policy--found that Florida’s cities have some of the highest serious delinquency rates in the country and rates are still rising rapidly. 

Indeed, nine out of the top 10 and 15 out of the top 25 metro areas with the highest serious delinquency rates in June 2010 were in Florida. Of the 25 metro areas with the biggest growth in serious delinquency rates from June 2009 to June 2010, 11 were in Florida. In the Miami metro area--the region with the highest serious delinquency rate--25.6% of mortgages were seriously delinquent in June 2010, up 4.3 percentage points from June 2009.

The situation is not so dire in other areas, notes Maya Brennan, a senior research associate at the Center for Housing Policy. “We are seeing some signs of hope in parts of California, where delinquency rates are still quite high but haven’t increased that much,” she tells GlobeSt.com. 

The new data are an update of an earlier dataset released in September 2010, but both reports show how dramatically the delinquency rates can fluctuate. The serious delinquency rate is high and rising in the Las Vegas metro area, at the second highest serious delinquency rate in June 2010 (24.2%) and the largest increase from the prior year (4.4 percentage points).

The Las Vegas metro area also had the largest 90-plus day delinquency rate of all 366 US metropolitan areas. This suggests that the problem is worsening in Las Vegas and that foreclosures are likely to continue to rise.

By contrast, the Bismarck, ND metro area had the lowest share of seriously delinquent mortgages in June 2010 (1.8% ) and the Austin, TX metro area had the lowest share among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas (4.3%).  

Seven of the 25 metro areas with the highest serious delinquency rates in June 2010 were in California, but as Brennan notes, there are signs that it is stabilizing. The overall rate of serious delinquency for the California metro areas grew only modestly between June 2009 and June 2010.