Residential loan servicers made progress on reducing new foreclosures while moving more mortgages that were in the foreclosure process into the real-estate-owned category.
Servicers started the foreclosure process on 54,613 U.S. properties during April, fewer than the 55,710 previously reported for the prior month.
The most recent activity brought the number of foreclosures started from Jan. 1 through April 30 to 219,424 based on previously reported data.
In April 2013, there were 70,133 U.S. foreclosures initiated.
The statistics were reported Thursday by RealtyTrac.
California was the location of 6,245 foreclosures starts, followed by 5,866 in Florida. After that were 3,357 in New Jersey, 3,222 in Texas and 2,997 in New York. None were reported for Idaho.
The number of U.S. properties that had some sort of filing — including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — fell to 115,830 from 117,485 in March and sank from 144,790 in April 2013.
Florida’s 22,445 filings exceeded those in all other states. California was next with 12,907 foreclosures, then 7,495 in Illinois, 6,833 in Ohio and 5,078 in New Jersey. Just two filings in North Dakota were the fewest of any state.
The national foreclosure rate was one filing for each 1,137 housing units during April. That was slightly better than one filing for each 1,121 U.S. homes a month earlier and much improved over one filing for each 905 housing units a year earlier.
Florida’s one-in-400 rate was the worst in the nation. The Sunshine State was the location of 11 metropolitan statistical areas that were among the 20-worst in the nation — including No. 1 Orlando.
Maryland was the No. 2 worst state with a rate of one-in-624. After that was one-in-657 in Delaware, one-in-681 in Indiana and one-in-700 in New Jersey. The most impressive foreclosure rate was in North Dakota: one-in-159,734.
The last — and arguably the most important — major foreclosure metric, completed foreclosures, worsened to 30,056 during the most recent month from 28,840 in March. But repossessions retreated from 34,997 in April 2013.
“The rise in bank repossessions in many states is a sign that those markets are working through the final remnants of foreclosures left over from the recent housing crisis,” RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist stated in the report. “Many of these bank-owned homes are bottom-of-the-barrel properties in terms of location or condition, but they will provide some much-wanted inventory of homes for sale in some markets in the coming months.”
So far this year, 119,429 U.S. foreclosures have been completed.
With 6,296 REO filings, Florida had more than any other state. California’s 2,788 completed foreclosures was next, then Illinois’ 1,829, Indiana’s 1,518 and Ohio’s 1,479.
North Dakota’s zero REO filings were the fewest of any state.
