Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
Foreclosure Inventory Falls 29% Since May 2012
IRVINE, Calif. -- There were 52,000 completed foreclosures in the United States in May, down from 71,000 in May 2012, CoreLogic reported Tuesday. The residential shadow inventory, also known as pending supply, as of April was below two million units, representing a supply of 5.3 months.
The shadow inventory has fallen 34% from its peak in 2010 when it reached three million homes and down 18% from a year ago, when it stood at 2.4 million.
Month-over-month, completed foreclosures increased 3.5%, from 50,000 in April to 52,000 in May, according to the May National Foreclosure Report from CoreLogic.
The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Florida (8.8%), New Jersey (6%), New York (4.8%), Maine (4.1%) and Connecticut (4.1%). Ohio and Pennsylvania are in the 2% to 3% range.
CoreLogic analysis further shows:
- As a basis of comparison to the 52,000 completed foreclosures reported for May, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006. Completed foreclosures are an indicator of all homes lost to foreclosure. Since the Great Recession began in September 2008, some 4.4 million foreclosures have been completed across the country.
- As of May, approximately one million homes were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory, compared to 1.4 million in May 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 29%. Month over month, the foreclosure inventory was down 3.3% from April. As of May, the foreclosure inventory represented 2.6% of all homes with a mortgage compared to 3.5% in May 2012.
- At the end of May, there are fewer than 2.3 million mortgages, or 5.6%, in serious delinquency (defined as 90 days or more past due, including those loans in foreclosure or real estate owned). The rate of seriously delinquent mortgages is at its lowest level since December 2008.
“The stock of seriously delinquent homes, which is the main driver of shadow inventory, is at the lowest level since December 2008,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, in a prepared statement. “Over the last year it has decreased in 42 states by double-digit figures, resulting in rapid declines in shadow inventory for the first quarter of 2013.”
The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ended in May 2013 were Florida (103,000), California (76,000), Michigan (64,000), Texas (51,000) and Georgia (47,000). These five states account for almost half of all completed foreclosures in the United States.
The five states with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ended in May 2013 were District of Columbia (108), Hawaii (453), North Dakota (467), West Virginia (517) and Maine (644).
The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Wyoming (0.5%), Alaska (0.6%), North Dakota (0.6%), Nebraska (0.8%) and Virginia (0.8%).
Of the fewer than two million properties in the shadow inventory, 890,000 properties are seriously delinquent (2.4 months’ supply), 761,000 are in some stage of foreclosure (two months’ supply) and 336,000 are already in real-estate owned (0.9 months’ supply).
The value of shadow inventory was $314 billion as of April, down from $386 billion in April 2012 and down from $320 billion in October 2012.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to our twice-monthly print edition and to our free daily email headlines.