Serious mortgage delinquency declined for the seventh consecutive month, while the foreclosure rate retreated and completed foreclosures continued falling.
Ninety-day delinquency on the collective U.S. residential loan portfolio landed at 5.4 percent as of July 31.
The past-due rate was down from June, when serious delinquency ended the month at 5.5 percent.
Based on historical data from CoreLogic, which reported the statistics, serious delinquency has been down each month since December 2012, when the rate was 6.4 percent.
A revised 6.9 percent of mortgages were at least three months past due as of July 31, 2012.
Around 949,000 home loans were in some stage of foreclosure during July, down from approximately 1 million the prior month and an upwardly revised 1.4 million a year prior.
“Continued strength in the housing market will contribute to our outlook for ongoing improvement in the stock of distressed assets through the end of this year,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Mark Fleming commented in the report.
July’s U.S. foreclosure inventory rate was 2.4 percent, improving from the prior month’s 2.5 percent rate. Compared to the same month last year, the foreclosure rate has fallen 100 basis points.
In Florida, 8.1 percent of all residential loans were included in the foreclosure inventory — the worst rate of any state. Next was New Jersey, where the rate was 5.9 percent. New York’s 4.7 percent rate followed, then Connecticut’s 4.0 percent and Maine’s 4.0 percent.
Each of the five-worst states requires that foreclosures be handled through the court system.
At the other end of the spectrum was Wyoming’s 0.4 percent. Wyoming is a non-judicial foreclosure state.
The number of completed U.S. foreclosures last month fell to 49,000 from a downwardly revised 53,000 in June. Repossessions have tumbled from July 2012, when there were an upwardly revised 65,000 real-estate-owned filings.
CoreLogic Chief Executive Officer Anand Nallathambi noted that July’s foreclosures and serious delinquencies were at the lowest level since December 2008 — with non-judicial foreclosure states making the most progress.
Despite the continued improvement, CoreLogic kept things in perspective by noting that the monthly rate of foreclosures averaged just 21,000 between 2000 and 2006.
During the seven months ended July 31, CoreLogic reported 349,000 completed foreclosures.
Florida’s 110,001 repossessions during the 12 months ended last month were the most of any state. Hurting the Sunshine State were the Core Based Statistical Areas of Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford — respectively the fourth- and seventh-worst CBSAs based on completed foreclosures.
A distant second was California’s 64,964. California was home to the No. 5 CBSA of Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario and No. 8 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale.
After that was Michigan’s 61,424, Texas’ 44,673 and Georgia’s 41,000. The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas area was the sixth-worst CBSA, while the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga., CBSA was No. 1.
The five-worst states collectively accounted for nearly half of all repossessions during the last 12 months.
North Dakota’s 484 REO filings were the fewest.
