Foreclosures Down Again in May

Another month, another promising sign of housing recovery. Corelogic reported on Tuesday that 47,000 foreclosures had been completed in May, a year-over-year decrease of 9.4 percent from May of 2013.

As of May, about 660,000 homes, 1.7 percent of all homes with a mortgage in the United States, were in some stage in the foreclosure process. While still large number, it represents a 37 percent decrease from May of 2013 when the foreclosure inventory topped one million homes.

“Significant gains have been made in the last year to reduce the foreclosure stock,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Yet, these improvements are occurring disproportionately in non-judicial states. The foreclosure inventory in judicial states is averaging 2.1 percent, which is more than twice the 0.9 percent average that is occurring in non-judicial states.”

Thirty-eight states show declines in year-over-year foreclosure inventory of greater than 30 percent with Arizona, Utah, Nebraska and Minnesota experiencing declines greater than 50 percent.

Foreclosure inventory registered its thirty-first month of consecutive year-over-year declines.  Corelogic stressed that the battle to return to normal levels of foreclosure inventory is far from over.

“The pace of completed foreclosures slowed in May compared to last month but I expect this to be a temporary respite,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “There is still much more hard work to do to clear the backlog of foreclosed properties. Although difficult, we need to continue to aggressively clear distressed homes to ensure the return of a healthy housing market.”