CoreLogic: Foreclosures, Inventory Fall in July

CoreLogic, Irvine, Calif., said foreclosure action and the nation’s foreclosure inventory continued to decline in July.    

The company’s National Foreclosure Report said the foreclosure inventory declined by 27.9 percent and completed foreclosures declined by 24.4 percent from a year ago. The number of foreclosures nationwide decreased year over year from 50,000 in July 2014 to 38,000 in July 2015, representing a decrease of 67.9 percent from the peak of 117,225 completed foreclosures in September 2010.  

Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, CoreLogic reported 5.8 million completed foreclosures across the country; since homeownership rates peaked in second quarter 2004, 7.8 million homes have been lost to foreclosure.  

CoreLogic said as of July, the national foreclosure inventory included 469,000, or 1.2 percent, of all homes with a mortgage compared witoth 650,000 homes, or 1.7 percent, a year ago. The July foreclosure rate is the lowest since December 2007.  

CoreLogic also reports that the number of mortgages in serious delinquency (defined as 90 days or more past due, including those loans in foreclosure or REO) declined by 23 percent from a year ago at 1.3 million mortgages, or 3.4 percent; this is the lowest serious delinquency rate since December 2007.  

“Job market gains and home-price appreciation help to push serious delinquency and foreclosure rates lower,” said CoreLogic Chief Economist Frank Nothaft. “The unemployment rate [fell] from 6.2 percent in July 2014 to 5.3 percent this July and supporting family income growth for most owners.”  

Other report highlights:  

On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures declined by 6.2 percent from the 40,000 reported in June. As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.

• States with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in July were Florida (98,000), Michigan (47,000), Texas (33,000), California (27,000) and Georgia (27,000). These states accounted for nearly half of all completed foreclosures nationally.
• States the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in July: South Dakota (33), the District of Columbia (124), North Dakota (316), Wyoming (483) and West Virginia (553).
• States with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes: New Jersey (4.8 percent), New York (3.7 percent), Florida (2.7 percent), Hawaii (2.5 percent) and the District of Columbia (2.4 percent).
• States with the lowest foreclosure inventory rate: Alaska (0.3 percent), Minnesota (0.4 percent), North Dakota (0.4 percent), Utah (0.4 percent) and Nebraska (0.4 percent).  

“As we enter the final months of 2015, the housing market continues to gather steam buoyed by improving economic conditions and the release of pent up demand for homeownership,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “The recovery in the housing market is also reflected in declining delinquency and foreclosure rates which, to some degree, reflects the progressive clearing of crisis-era loans and the benefits of tighter underwriting standards over the past six years.”