Mortgage servicers continued to repossess fewer homes as overall foreclosure filings have retreated to levels not seen since before the financial crisis.
Foreclosures were initiated on 47,243 U.S. properties in June, fewer than the 49,240 new filings previously reported for the prior month.
The improvement was far more substantial when compared to the 57,286 foreclosure starts previously reported for the same month last year.
RealtyTrac released the latest foreclosure data on Thursday.
Year-to-date June 30, foreclosures have been started on roughly 315,907 properties.
California’s 6,383 foreclosure starts last month were more than in any other state. No. 2 Florida had 4,717 starts, followed by Ohio’s 2,797, Texas’ 2,709 and New York’s 2,604. Neither Nebraska nor North Dakota had any new filings reported.
Including all types of filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and repossessions — filings were made on 107,194 U.S. properties, down from the 109,824 in May and also better than 127,790 in June 2013.
“Nationwide foreclosure activity in June reached an important milestone, dropping to levels not seen since before the housing price bubble burst in August 2006,” RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist said in the report. “Over the next six to nine months nationwide foreclosure numbers should start to flat line at consistently historically normal levels.”
The latest activity brought the year-to-date total to 613,874 properties with filings.
Florida topped this category with 21,946 Sunshine State properties hit with some sort of filing during June. California was next with 12,804. After that were 8,209 filings in Illinois, 6,909 in Ohio and 4,472 in Pennsylvania.
No filings were noted for North Dakota.
The U.S. foreclosure rate last month was one filing made on each 1,228 housing units. That was better than one-in-1,199 in May and one-in-1,025 in June 2013.
For the entire first half of this year, there was one filing on each 214 residential properties.
June’s rate was worst in Florida:Â one-in-409. Maryland’s one-in-578 rate was second-worst. Then Illinois’ one-in-645, Ohio’s one-in-742 and Iowa’s one-in-840.
At one filing for each 113,887 housing units, Nebraska had the most favorable rate in the nation.
Moving on to completed foreclosures, there were 26,889 repossessions on U.S. properties last month. Real-estate-owned filings retreated from 28,373 in May and tumbled from 35,507 in the same month during 2013.
From Jan. 1 through June 30, there were 174,691 REO filings.
Mortgage servicers completed 6,208 foreclosures in Florida — more than in any other state. California’s REO count was 2,371. No. 3 Illinois had 2,061 repossessions, then 1,724 in Ohio and 1,049 in Maryland.
None were reported in North Dakota.
