There were about 50,000 completed foreclosures in July – a decrease of 6.2% compared with 38,000 in June and a decrease of 24.4% compared with July 2014, according to CoreLogic's National Foreclosure Report.
In addition, completed foreclosures were down about 67.9% from the peak of 117,225 in September 2010.
As of July, about 469,000 single-family homes, or 1.2% of all homes with a mortgage, were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory. That's compared with about 650,000 homes, or 1.7%, in July 2014 – a decrease of 27.9%.
States with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ended in July included Florida (98,000), Michigan (47,000), Texas (33,000), California (27,000) and Georgia (27,000). These five states accounted for almost half of all completed foreclosures nationally.
States with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ended in July included South Dakota (33), the District of Columbia (124), North Dakota (316), Wyoming (483) and West Virginia (553).
Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 5.8 million completed foreclosures across the country. What's more, since homeownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been approximately 7.8 million homes lost to foreclosure.
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 real estate owned) decreased by 23% from July 2014 to July 2015, with 1.3 million mortgages, or 3.4%, falling into this category. 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,’ says Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, in a release. ‘The CoreLogic national HPI showed home prices in July rose 6.9 percent from a year earlier, building equity for homeowners. Further, 2.4 million jobs were created, pushing the unemployment rate down from 6.2 percent in July 2014 to 5.3 percent this July and supporting family income growth for most owners.’
‘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,’ adds 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.’
