Foreclosures Rise, but Improvement Seen in Foreclosure Inventory

The number of completed foreclosures inrnJanuary rose to 69,000 from 65,000 in December according to the NationalrnForeclosure Report released today by CoreLogic. rnIn January 2011 there were 80,000 completed foreclosures and 860,128 duringrnthe 12 months that ended in January. </p

AnandrnNallathambi, chief executive officer of CoreLogic, a provider of information,rnanalytics, and business services said “Wernare encouraged by the noticeable progress we are seeing over the last severalrnmonths in the mortgage industry.  Duringrnthe last several years the industry has faced enormous challenges workingrnthrough difficult and complex issues. We are hopeful that these recentrnimprovements are early signals of revitalization in the mortgage market.”</p

While foreclosures may havernincreased, there was a drop in the foreclosure inventory, those loans which arernin the process of foreclosure. rnApproximately 1.4 million homes or 3.3 percent of all homes with arnmortgage were in the inventory in January compared to 1.5 million or 3.6rnpercent one year earlier, a decrease of 145,000 homes or 9.5 percent, and 1.4rnmillion or 3.4 percent in December.  </p

Serious delinquencies – i.e. thernpercentage of homeowners who were more than 90 days late on their mortgagernpayment, was unchanged from December at 7.2 percent but down from 7.8 percentrnin January 2011</p

The inventory of foreclosedrnproperties held by lenders (REO) grew faster in January than the pace of REOrnsales, lowering the distressed clearing ratio from 0.80 in December to 0.69 inrnJanuary.  The distressed clearing ratiornis calculated by dividing the number of REO sales by the number of completedrnforeclosures; the higher the ratio, the faster the pace of REO sales relativernto the pace of completed foreclosures. </p

“The pace of completedrnforeclosures is gradually increasing again, but the clearing ratio is fallingrnas REO sales have slowed in the winter months. Judicial foreclosure states^{1</supare continuing to process foreclosures more slowly than non-judicialrnforeclosure states," said Mark Fleming, chief economist with CoreLogic.rn"Non-judicial foreclosure states completed almost twice as manyrnforeclosures per 1000 active loans as judicial foreclosure states in January."rn</p}

The largest number of completed foreclosuresrnduring the 12 months ending in January 2012 was in California (155,000)rnfollowed by Florida (86,000), Arizona (65,000), Michigan (65,000) and Texasrn(57,000). These five states account for 49.7 percent of all completedrnforeclosures nationally.  The highestrnforeclosure rates were in Florida (11.8 percent), New Jersey (6.4 percent),rnIllinois (5.3 percent), Nevada (5.0 percent) and New York (4.7 percent).

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