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National foreclosure completions in June were up 5 percent from May, but compared to a year ago, the number of foreclosures is definitively down, according to the June 2016 National Foreclosure Report from CoreLogic.
June’s 38,000 foreclosures is a bump from May’s 36,000, but is 26 percent down from a year ago, and still 67.5 percent down from the foreclosure peak of 117,835 in September 2010. As of June, CoreLogic reported, the national foreclosure inventory included approximately 375,000, or 1 percent, of all homes with a mortgage, compared with 507,000 homes (1.3 percent) last year. Overall, June’s foreclosure inventory was down 3.6 percent compared with May and is the lowest for any month since August 2007.
CoreLogic also reported that the number of mortgages in serious delinquency (90 days or more past due, including loans in foreclosure or REO) declined by 21.3 percent from June 2015 to June 2016, with 1.1 million mortgages, or 2.8 percent, in this category. The June 2016 serious delinquency rate is the lowest since September 2007.
Five states accounted for almost 40 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally over the past year. Florida led with 60,000 foreclosures, followed by Michigan, with 47,000. Texas (27,000), Ohio (23,000) and California (22,000) completed the big five foreclosure states, though according to Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, the serious delinquency rate in the Dallas area has fallen by 0.5 percent from a year earlier, as home prices and employment have continued to rise.
However, the rate in the Midland area, jumped 0.5 percent, “reflecting the weakness in oil production and job loss over the past year," Nothaft said.
New Jersey had the highest foreclosure inventory rate, at 3.4 percent, followed by New York (3.1 percent), the District of Columbia (2 percent), Hawaii (2 percent), and Maine (1.9 percent). Interestingly, D.C. had the lowest number of completed foreclosures (179) over the Last year. North Dakota (321), West Virginia (487), Alaska (639), and Montana (675) rounded out the five states with the lowest completions.
The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory rate were Colorado (0.3 percent), Michigan (0.3 percent), Minnesota (0.3 percent), Nebraska (0.3 percent), and Utah (0.3 percent).
"The impact of the inexorable reduction over the past several years in both foreclosure trends and serious delinquencies is driving the long-awaited return to more historic norms for the U.S. housing market," said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. "We expect the combination of continued home price appreciation of more than 5 percent and rising employment levels in the year ahead will help cement the gains we have had and perhaps accelerate them."
