The national foreclosure rate jumped over 4 percent in September Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) said today, but the foreclosure inventory continued to decline.  LPS, a data and analytics company, released a preview on Wednesday of selected delinquency statistics from its monthly Mortgage Monitor report.  The full report will be available in early November.

The rate of mortgage loans that were 30-days or more past due increased by 4.23 percent from August to a national rate of 6.46 percent.  That rate was 12.63 percent below the level of September 2012.  The September rate equates to a total of 3.27 million loans that are delinquent but not yet in foreclosure.  Of these, 1.33 million are seriously delinquent, that is 90 or more days past due but not in foreclosure.

The foreclosure pre-sale inventory currently consists of 1.33 million delinquent loans.  This is a national rate of 2.63 percent, a decrease of 1.29 percent from August.  The inventory, loans that are in some stage of foreclosure, has fallen 32.18 percent since September 2012.

The total number of non-current loans in the U.S. is now 4.59 million.  Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, and Maine have the highest percentage of non-current loans, a designation that includes both delinquent loans and loans in foreclosure.