Hawaii residents carried the nation’s third-highest mortgage debt per borrower in the fourth quarter of 2012, a new TransUnion report shows.

The average mortgage debt of $315,721 — slightly up from $311,099 in the year-earlier period — was well above the national mortgage debt of $186,785.

However, the average delinquency rate fell to 4.66 percent from 4.8 percent a year earlier.

"The economy is showing signs of fragile improvement," said Wendy Burkholder, executive director of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Hawaii. "We haven’t seen any mass layoffs like we did during the recession, unemployment is down — those things are all going to factor into people’s ability to keep their mortgage current. It’s hopeful. It’s not in leaps and bounds; it’s going to be baby steps."

Nationally, TransUnion said the average delinquency rate was 5.19 percent in the fourth consecutive quarter of declines.

"The national mortgage delinquency rate experienced its largest yearly decline since the conclusion of the recession, though we still remain far above normal levels," said Tim Martin, TransUnion’s group vice president of U.S. housing. "The elevated delinquency levels that we still are experiencing are a result of older vintage loans — borrowers who haven’t been making their payments for a rather long time that are still in the system, inflating the overall rate."

But declines in the mortgage delinquency rate will likely "be muted for the foreseeable future" since the foreclosure process in some states can take more than 1,000 days, Martin added.

"It’s not clear yet, but recently announced regulatory rules related to mortgage servicing may tend to slow down this process further," he said.

State lawmakers overhauled Hawaii’s foreclosure law in 2011 through Act 48, which local foreclosure attorneys say caused lenders to scale back the volume of cases initiated. Act 182 last year further overhauled the law and appears to have again reduced the volume of new foreclosure cases, though volume recently has been rebounding.

"The foreclosures are definitely a cloud on the horizon in terms of just beginning to uptick," said Hono­lulu bankruptcy attorney David Farmer. "There’s a lot of caution because of the new law changes."

Hawaii’s mortgage debt ranked behind California at $324,867 and Washington, D.C., at $375,353.

The lowest-mortgage-debt states were West Virginia at $104,143, Mississippi at $108,981 and Okla­homa at $113,757.

"Obviously, we are in the top-tier highest mortgage rate because of our property values," said Farmer, one of three federal bankruptcy court trustees operating in the District of Hawaii. "There’s a lot of other borrowing (home equity lines, etc.) that are in that mix. It’s another way of stalling the inevitable, which is that little by little the debt mounts up and at some point the piper’s got to be paid. The renewal of our economy is very brittle and can be tipped over very easily. It’s kind of an uneasy feeling we’re in right now."