The slowing of foreclosure activity continued in October with only 58,000 foreclosures completed, down 17% from a year ago, Irvine, Calif.-based CoreLogic (CLGX) said Monday.
From the previous month, foreclosures also fell 25% when compared to September’s 77,000 competed foreclosures.
When America was in more normal times pre-housing crisis, foreclosures averaged about 21,000 completed actions per month between the years 2000 and 2006. Since September of 2008, 3.9 million foreclosures have been completed across the U.S.
In October, about 3.2% of all homes, or 1.3 million properties, were in the nation’s foreclosure inventory, down from 1.5 million a year ago and down 1.3% from September. The numbers show a real estate economy that continues to outpace normal times in terms of completed foreclosures, but the numbers are dropping steadily.
“A lower foreclosure inventory is a good indicator of improving housing markets,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “The downward trend in foreclosure inventories over the past year is yet another signal that a recovery in housing is gaining traction.”
The states with the highest number of completed foreclosures included California with 105,000 foreclosures; Florida with 95,000 foreclosures, Michigan with 68,000 foreclosures, Texas with 59,000 foreclosures and Georgia with 54,000 foreclosures. All of these states accounted for 49% of all of the completed foreclosures nationwide.
The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as percentage of all mortgage homes included Florida (11.1 percent), New Jersey (7.7 percent), New York (5.3 percent), Illinois (5.0 percent) and Nevada (4.8 percent).
