Foreclosure Improvements Held Back by Judicial States

Completed foreclosures in September totaledrn51,000 nationwide, down 39 percent from a year earlier when banks repossessedrn84,000 homes.   CoreLogic said, in its September NationalrnForeclosure Report, that the number of foreclosures last month was virtuallyrnidentical to that in August.</p

By way of comparison, CoreLogic saidrnthat in what might be considered a more normal market, the period from 2001 torn2006, there were an average of 21,000 foreclosures completed each month.  The approximately 4.6 million foreclosuresrncompleted in the 60 months since the financial crisis began in September 2008 averagern76,700 per month.</p

In September the foreclosure inventory,rnthat is the number of homes in some stage of foreclosure, stood atrnapproximately 902,000, down one third from 1.4 million one year earlier.  The inventory decreased by 3.3 percent fromrnAugust to September.  The inventory inrnSeptember represented approximately 2.3 percent of mortgages homes in the U.S.,rndown from 3.2 percent in September 2012. </p

“The foreclosure inventory continuesrnto decline, now standing at an early 2009 level,” said Mark Fleming, chiefrneconomist for CoreLogic. “Just over 900,000 properties remain in the inventory,rntwo thirds of them in judicial states where the foreclosure process isrntypically slower. Consequently, the pace of overall improvement in therninventory will slow down and distressed assets will cast a long shadow overrnhousing markets in states with judicial foreclosure.”</p

</p

“The number of seriously delinquentrnmortgages continues to drop across the country at a rapid rate with every staternshowing year-over-year declines in foreclosure inventory,” said AnandrnNallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “We’re not out of the woods yet,rnbut these are encouraging signs for a return to a healthier housing market inrnthe U.S.”</p

Five states accounted for almostrnhalf of all completed foreclosures over the 12 months ended in September.  Florida had 115,000 foreclosures, Californiarn52,000, Texas 43,000, Michigan, 40,000, and Georgia 39,000. The states with thernhighest foreclosure inventory as a percent of mortgaged homes were Florida (7.4rnpercent), New Jersey (6.5 percent), New York (4.8 percent), Maine (4.0 percent)rnand Connecticut (3.7 percent).

All Content Copyright © 2003 – 2009 Brown House Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.nReproduction in any form without permission of MortgageNewsDaily.com is prohibited.