The U.S. ended the month of June with 60,000 completed foreclosures, a 24% drop from year ago levels when 80,000 foreclosures were reported for the same month, according to a report from mortgage data analytics firm CoreLogic (CLGX).
The steep drop puts completed foreclosures at a level not seen since 2007.
Santa Ana, Calif,-based CoreLogic says the drop in completed foreclosures is good news, but other issues in the housing market remain.
“The decline in the flow of completed foreclosures to pre-financial crisis levels is more welcome news pointing to an emerging housing market recovery,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “However, we believe even more can be done to reduce the inventory of foreclosures by decreasing the level of regulatory uncertainty and expanding alternatives to foreclosure.”
Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, said, “While completed foreclosures and real-estate owned (REO) sales virtually offset each other over the past four months, producing static levels of foreclosure inventory for most of this year, they are beginning to diverge again. Over the last two months REO sales declined while completed foreclosures leveled out. So we could see foreclosure inventory rising going forward.”
About 1.4 million homes, or 3.4% of all homes with a mortgage, were in the nation’s foreclosure inventory for June. That is down from 1.5 million in June of 2011.
