Cures outnumbered new notices of default at two of the nation's largest private mortgage insurers for February. If this pattern holds for the rest of the private mortgage insurance industry, it could be an echo of what took place starting last February.
At Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp., there were 16,216 cures and 14,074 new delinquencies during the month, while at Radian there were 8,055 cures and 6,675 new delinquencies.
This represents a turnaround from January, where there were 17,229 new delinquency notices offset by 12,536 cures at MGIC and 9,030 new notices of delinquency and 6,653 cures at Radian.
While January 2010 had the lowest cure/default ratio for the year at 68.1%, according to Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America data, for each of the next four months, there were more new cures than defaults.
For most of 2010, the cure/default ratio was in the 90% area, but in December it dropped under 80% and stayed that way in January 2011.
Meanwhile, with the addition of paid claims, rescissions and denials, MGIC had its primary delinquent inventory go from 213,860 at the start of February to 206,446 at the end of the month. For Radian, the inventory went from 125,389 to 122,918; the total includes 316 loans shifted from the pool delinquent inventory to the primary delinquent inventory.
As for new insurance written, MGIC did approximately $900 million for February, down from $1.2 billion in January. Radian wrote nearly $700 million, down from January's $1.1 billion.
