U.S. home foreclosures and the rate of homes entering foreclosure hit record highs in the second quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Friday. While figures improved in some states, increases in foreclosures in California and Florida wiped out those gains. “The national foreclosure numbers continue to be driven by the hardest-hit states continuing to get much worse,” Jay Brinkmann, the association's chief economist and senior vice president for research and economics, said in a news release. Most states saw relatively little change in the figures, but California and Florida accounted for 39 percent of all of the foreclosures started in the second quarter and 73 percent of the increase in foreclosures between the first and second quarters, Brinkmann said. The seasonally adjusted foreclosure starts rate, which measures the percentage of loans that entered foreclosure during the April-June quarter, was 1.19 percent, up from 0.99 percent in the first three months of 2008 and 0.65 percent in the second quarter of 2007. The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the second quarter rose to 2.75 percent from 2.47 percent in the first quarter and 1.40 percent in the second quarter of 2007. The U.S. mortgage delinquency rate of 6.41 percent was the highest since at least 1979, which was when the trade group began its current method of measuring failing home loans. The rate rose from 6.35 percent in the first quarter and 5.12 percent in the second quarter of 2007.
