The July Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services shows that national foreclosure inventories remain stable – and near historic highs – while delinquencies, down 30 percent from the January 2010 peak, continued to decline slightly for the month. The report also highlights the link between negative equity and new problem loans.

“The July mortgage performance data shows a continuing correlation between negative equity and new problem loans,” explained Herb Blecher, senior vice president, LPS Applied Analytics. “Nationally, 18 percent of borrowers who are current on their loan payments are ‘underwater’ (owing more on the mortgage than the home’s current market value), ranging from a low of 0.4 percent in Wyoming to nearly 55 percent in Nevada. As negative equity increases, we see corresponding increases in the number of new problem loans. In Nevada and Florida, two of the states with the highest percentage of underwater borrowers, more than three percent of borrowers who were up to date on their payments are 60 or more days delinquent six months later. This suggests that further home price declines – should they occur – could jeopardize recent improvements.”

 The July data also shows that non-judicial foreclosure states continue to see greater improvement in non-current rates (including loans 30 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure) than those in their judicial counterparts. On a year-over-year basis, judicial states have seen non-current inventories decline 3.1 percent as compared to an 8.7 percent drop in non-judicial states. Looking at the change from the peak, the non-current inventory in non-judicial states was down 31 percent compared to a decline of 13 percent in judicial states. A few states on both sides of the foreclosure process – Washington (non-judicial), New Jersey and Vermont (both judicial) still remained at historic highs as of the end of July.

As reported in LPS' First Look release, other key results from LPS' latest Mortgage Monitor report include:

*Non-current totals combine foreclosures and delinquencies as a percent of active loans in that state.

Note: Totals are extrapolated based on LPS Applied Analytics' loan-level database of mortgage assets.

 About the Mortgage Monitor

LPS manages the nation's leading repository of loan-level residential mortgage data and performance information on nearly 40 million loans across the spectrum of credit products. The company's research experts carefully analyze this data to produce a summary supplemented by dozens of charts and graphs that reflect trend and point-in-time observations for LPS' monthly Mortgage Monitor Report. To review the full report, visit http://www.lpsvcs.com/LPSCorporateInformation/CommunicationCenter/DataReports/Pages/Mortgage-Monitor.aspx

About Lender Processing Services

Lender Processing Services (NYSE: LPS) is a Fortune 1000 company headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., employing approximately 8,000 professionals. LPS delivers comprehensive technology solutions and services, as well as powerful data and analytics, to the nation’s top mortgage lenders, servicers and investors. As a proven and trusted partner with deep client relationships, LPS offers the only end-to-end suite of solutions that provides major U.S. banks and many federal government agencies the technology and data needed to support mortgage lending and servicing operations, meet unique regulatory and compliance requirements and mitigate risk.

 These integrated solutions support origination, servicing, portfolio retention and default servicing. LPS’ servicing solutions include MSP, the industry’s leading loan-servicing platform, which is used to service approximately 50 percent of all U.S. mortgages by dollar volume. The company also provides proprietary data and analytics for the mortgage, real estate and capital markets industries.

 For more information, please visit www.lpsvcs.com.