February 18, 2011 (Shirley Allen)

Florida now has the nation’s highest foreclosure rate accounting for nearly one out of every four foreclosures in the country. More than 14 percent of Florida’s mortgages were in foreclosure in the fourth quarter of 2010 On top of that, an additional 5.2 percent were more than 90 days behind on their payments.

“More than 20 percent of all loans in Florida are somewhere past due or somewhere in foreclosure,” said Mike Fratantoni, vice president of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).

As a sign that Florida’s courts are struggling with the massive amount of foreclosures and the fall-out of the robo-signing controversy, the foreclosure process now takes a total of 742 days in Miami-Dade County and 689 days in Broward County, according to Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services. That’s nearly twice as long as it took in 2007.

There was a bit of good news as foreclosure starts in the state are down and the number of loans that are seriously past due decreased 0.7 percent from the previous quarter.

Over 24 percent of the loans in Florida are one payment or more past due or in the process of foreclosure, the highest rate in the nation, followed by Nevada at over 22 percent, compared to an average of 13.6 percent for the nation. Only eleven states saw an increase in their foreclosure start rate with Maryland seeing the largest increase.

Areas in Florida with the highest foreclosure rates were Cape Coral-Fort Myers (1 in 8.4), Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach (1 in 7.08), Orlando-Kissimmee (1 in 6.86) and Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach (1 in 5.77).

Tags: florida, foreclosure rate, robo-signing controversy, mortgages