Florida Still Tops in Nation for 12-Month Sum of Completed Foreclosures

While foreclosure activity in Florida has been generally declining for the last year, the Sunshine State has still not completely recovered from being one of the states hit hardest by the financial crisis and foreclosure wave, which peaked in 2010.

According to CoreLogic's November 2014 National Foreclosure Report, there were 118,089 completed foreclosures in Florida for the 12-month period ending November 30, 2014, by far the most of any state in the nation. A distant second was Michigan with 50,195 and Texas was in third with 35,601. California (29,226) came in fourth. Florida is the only one of those four that is a judicial foreclosure state, meaning the foreclosure process has to pass through the court system to be completed.

Florida's 12-month sum of completed foreclosures for the period ending November 30, 2014, represented approximately one-fifth of the nation's completed foreclosures during that same period (575,000), according to CoreLogic. The 575,000 completed foreclosures nationwide for the 12-month period was the lowest total in seven years.

Florida had the second-highest serious delinquency rate (percentage of mortgages that are 90 days or more overdue or are in foreclosure) for November 2014 with 8.1 percent. New Jersey had the highest serious delinquency rate for the month with 8.9 percent. The national average for the month was 4.0 percent, representing a 22.8 percent year-over-year decline and the lowest percentage since June 2008.

In the category of foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgages, Florida was once again near the top in November 2014 despite experiencing a 3.2 percent year-over-year decline. About 3.9 percent of all residential homes with a mortgage were in some state of foreclosure in Florida during the month, which ranked third among states. New Jersey (5.3 percent) and New York (4.1 percent) topped the list at first and second, respectively. The national average for the month was 1.5 percent, which was down from the 2.2 percent that was reported in November 2013.

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida metropolitan statistical area had the most completed foreclosures of any metro area for the 12-month period ending November 30, 2014, with 18,435. Tampa's foreclosure inventory for November 2014, 4.9 percent, was a decline of 3.2 percent from a year earlier but was still tops among metro areas. Tampa also had the highest serious delinquency rate (9.1 percent) of any metro area in November 2014.