Foreclosure Activity Follows Recovery Track

RISMEDIA, Thursday, November 10, 2016— Foreclosure activity continues to follow a recovery track, with completions and inventory down in September, CoreLogic® reports. According to its September 2016 National Foreclosure Report, completions declined 7.0 percent in September to 36,000, and inventory, which included approximately 340,000 of all homes with a mortgage, declined 31.1 percent. “Completed foreclosures have fallen by a total of more than 100,000 homes during the 12 months prior to September 2016,” says Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “The decline in foreclosures is one of the drivers in the drop in vacancies, which is positive for homeowners and communities. Heading into 2017 we see that prices, performance and production—the three most important drivers of the real estate market—are all improving.” The number of mortgages in 90-days-or-more delinquency, in addition, declined 24.8 percent in September, with 1 million mortgages in serious delinquency—the lowest level since August 2007, according to CoreLogic’s report. “September’s serious delinquency rate dropped by 25 percent compared to a year earlier, the third consecutive monthly acceleration in the rate of decline,” says Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “This improvement is continued evidence of the recovery in the housing market, especially given that the decreases were fairly uniform in most cities across the country.” The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures in the 12 months ending in September 2016 were Florida (53,000), Texas (27,000), Michigan (24,000), Ohio (23,000) and Georgia (21,000), according to the report. These five states accounted for 36 percent of completed foreclosures nationally. Four states and the District of Columbia had the lowest number of completed foreclosures in the 12 months ending in September 2016: the District of Columbia (186), North Dakota (338), West Virginia (447), Alaska (643) and Montana (701). Four states and the District of Columbia had the highest foreclosure inventory rate in September 2016: New Jersey (3.0 percent), New York (2.7 percent), Maine (1.8 percent), Hawaii (1.8 percent) and the District of Columbia (1.6 percent), according to the report. The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory rate in September 2016 were Colorado (0.3 percent), Minnesota (0.3 percent), Arizona (0.3 percent), Michigan (0.3 percent) and Utah (0.3). Since September 2008, there have been approximately 6.4 million completed foreclosures nationally, and since homeownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been approximately 8.5 million homes lost to foreclosure. Source: CoreLogic