Completed foreclosures are officially at the lowest level since the Great Recession began in 2007, with foreclosures falling to 599,000 over the last year, according CoreLogic’s (CLGX) April National Foreclosure Report.
For april, there were 46,000 completed foreclosures nationally, down from 56,000 in april, a year-over-year decrease of 18%.
Month-to-month, completed foreclosures were only marginally down .4% from 47,000 in March 2014.
To put it in better perspective, before the decline of the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.
"We have now registered two and a half years of continuous decreases in the number of homeowners who are in some stage of the foreclosure process. This consistent decline means fewer Americans are experiencing the distress of delinquency and default," said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. "The recovery may be slow, but it is steady."
Additionally, as of April 2014, approximately 694,000 homes in the United States were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory, compared to 1.1 million in April 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 35%.
"At the current pace of completed foreclosures, and given the current foreclosure inventory, it will take 14 months to move all of the foreclosed inventory through the pipeline," Sam Khater, deputy chief economist for CoreLogic.
This follows RealtyTrac's report Thursday that residential properties sold at an estimated annual pace of 5,213,793 in April, a decrease of less than 1% from March but an increase of 4% from April 2014.
