Nearly 17% of mortgage borrowers in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area were late on payments by 90 days or more as of October 2011 -- a ratio that has been stagnant for nearly a year.
According to CoreLogic, the delinquency rate in Tampa Bay for October was 16.82% -- nearly unchanged from the December 2010 rate of 16.86%. Over that same timeframe, the foreclosure rate has increased from 11.24% to 12.38%.
The North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota market has seen similar stagnation, but its October rates were slightly lower than those than in Tampa Bay: 16.27% of Sarasota area mortgage borrowers were three months late on payments, and 11.97% were in foreclosure.
But while its northerly neighbors struggle to clean themselves up, Cape Coral-Fort Myers has become the area leader in terms of foreclosure ratios. It had the region's lowest delinquency rate -- although just barely, at 16.25% -- as well as the lowest foreclosure rate, at 10.55%.
And while several questions about the future of judicial review in Florida's foreclosure process remain, Lee County's improvements go beyond legal technicalities: the area's delinquency rate, which has nothing to do with foreclosure filings, is down three percentage points over the year, from 19.45% in October 2010.