Foreclosures Increased in January, but Down 19 percent From Last Year

Foreclosure completions accelerated inrnJanuary, rising 11.8 percent to 48,000 compared to 43,000 in December.   CoreLogic’s January National ForeclosurernReport says this is a 19 percent improvement over January 2013 when 59,000rnhomes were lost to foreclosure.</p

Sincernthe housing crisis began CoreLogic estimates that there have been approximatelyrn4.9 million completed foreclosures nationwide, a rough average of 68,000 perrnmonth (January 2008-December 2013.)  Therncompany offers as context that completedrnforeclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.</p

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From January 2013 to January 2014rnthe number of homes in some stage of foreclosure, the foreclosure inventory,rndeclined by one-third, falling from 1.2 million to 794,000.  The current inventory represents about 2.0rnpercent of all mortgaged homes, down from 2.9 percent a year earlier, the 27^{th</supconsecutive month of year-over-year declines. rnThe January inventory is 3.3 percent below the December level.</p}

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About half of all the nation’srncompleted foreclosures over the 12 months ending in January were in five largernstates, Florida (116,000), Michigan (52,000), Texas (39,000), Californiarn(38,000) and Georgia (35,000).  Thernlargest foreclosure inventories as a percent of mortgaged homes were in Floridarn(6.4 percent), New Jersey (6.3 percent), New York (4.8 percent), Connecticutrn(3.4 percent) and Maine (3.4 percent).</p

Corelogic says the nationalrndelinquency rate now stands at 5.0 percent and all but six of the 27 non-judicialrnforeclosure states*, (Nevada, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Rhode Island, andrnArkansas) have rates below that figure. rnHowever, of the 24 states using the judicial foreclosure process 12 havernrates above the national average and two, Florida and New Jersey, have morernthan double that rate.</p

“We are recovering, but we’rernnot there yet,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.rn”For every completed foreclosure, there are 954 mortgaged homes inrnnon-judicial foreclosure states and 896 mortgaged homes in judicial foreclosurernstates. Although this is a big improvement relative to the height of thernforeclosure crisis, a healthier ratio would be one for every 2000.”</p

“The painful tide of highrnforeclosures continues to recede as fewer borrowers are losing their homes andrnstates are working through their shadow inventory,” said AnandrnNallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “We are entering 2014 withrnless than a million homes in the foreclosure inventory. We expect to seerncontinued progress in the months ahead, but the judicial foreclosure statesrnwill continue to lag the rest of the country in working down their backlogs ofrnforeclosed properties.”</p

*Including the District of Columbia

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