Bloomberg News reports that lenders are not foreclosing as quickly as they once did.

Lenders took an average of 61 days to foreclose on a property last year, up from 37 days in the year earlier, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure database in Irvine, California.

As a result, the percentage of borrowers at least 90 days behind on their mortgage hit a five-year high of 3.6% in December, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mortgage servicing companies are short-staffed and overwhelmed by the number of homeowners falling behind on their payments, making it difficult to process the large number of defaults.

No wonder. More than 1 million more loans -- a record 2% of all mortgages -- were in foreclosure at the end of last year.

Sometimes lenders deliberately wait to move against delinquent homeowners because there are so many foreclosed homes already on the market. It's better to let the borrowers live there for free than to create another vacant, vandal-prone, difficult-to-sell property.

Real estate broker Georgia Kapsalis is offering a home for sale in Birmingham, Mich., a Detroit suburb, where the owner last wrote a mortgage check in July. He still lives in the house, she said.

"Some of the banks just don't want the houses to be empty, especially if it's in an area where there's a lot of theft or there are five other houses empty on the street,'' Kapsalis told Bloomberg. "They'll lose toilets, plumbing, appliances, everything. Banks are getting wise and allowing people to live there longer.''

If you're behind on your mortgage, here's our best advice on how to save your home from foreclosure or decide it's time to accept the inevitable and walk away from your home.