Based on the number of homes lost to foreclosure, the monthly total has slowed more than 16 percent over the past year. Still, the pace of foreclosures stands at more than double the level before the housing crash.
As of April 30, around 1.1 million residential properties were in some stage of foreclosure. The foreclosure inventory was off 2 percent from the revised level a month earlier and 24 percent better than a year earlier.
Activity in April brought the U.S. foreclosure inventory rate to 2.8 percent, a significant improvement from 3.5 percent in March.
The findings were discussed in the April National Foreclosure Report released Wednesday from CoreLogic.
Loans in foreclosure accounted for 9.5 percent of all mortgaged properties in Florida, the worst rate of any state.
Also sporting a bloated foreclosure inventory was New Jersey, where 7.4 percent of mortgages were in foreclosure. New York’s 5.1 percent was next, followed by Maine’s 4.4 percent and Nevada’s 4.3 percent.
All of the five-worst states except Nevada are judicial foreclosure states.
Wyoming’s 0.5 percent was the lowest foreclosure rate of any state. Wyoming is a non-judicial foreclosure state.
Last month’s completed foreclosures amounted to 52,000, the same number as in March. But real-estate-owned filings have fallen from a year earlier, when 62,000 homes were repossessed.
CoreLogic noted that the pace of completed foreclosures is still elevated compared to the period from 2000 until 2006, when the monthly average was around 21,000.
So far this year, 216,000 homes have been repossessed.
“The shadow of foreclosure and distress continues to fade, with the annualized sum of completed foreclosures having declined for 17 straight months,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Dr. Mark Fleming said in the report.
Florida topped the list of states with the most completed foreclosures during the 12 months ended April 30, with 101,614 REO filings in April. Boosting activity in the Sunshine State were the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater core-based statistical area, which had the fifth-highest volume of all CBSAs, and the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford CBSA, which was No. 9.
California’s 79,374 completed foreclosures followed. The Golden State was propped up by the CBSAs of Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale — respectively No. 4 and No. 7 among all areas.
Next was 68,277 in Michigan, where the Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills was the 10th-worst CBSA in the nation.
After that was 52,566 in Texas, which hosts the sixth-worst CBSA: Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown.
No. 5, with 46,775 completed foreclosures, was Georgia, where the worst CBSA, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, is located.
With only 81 repossessions, South Dakota had the fewest REO filings.
