While those in the mortgage industry continue to debate whether or not housing has recovered and what exactly constitutes a recovery, default metrics continue to tumble. In November, the number of homes in some state of foreclosure across the country was reported to be approximately one-third of its peak reached nearly five years ago, according to CoreLogic’s November 2015 National Foreclosure Report released on Tuesday.
Foreclosure inventory was reported to be about 448 thousand properties for November, which comprises approximately 1 point 2 percent of all residential homes in the country—the lowest foreclosure rate for any one month since November 2007. This number represented a 21 point 8 percent decline from November 2014 and is a drop of about 67 percent from the peak reached in January 2011, when approximately 3 point 6 percent of all homes with a mortgage were in foreclosure.
As part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s directive to excise non-performing loans and deeply delinquent loans from its residential mortgage portfolio, Fannie Mae announced on Tuesday its first bulk NPL sale by auction of 2016 and fourth overall. The NPL offering announced Tuesday includes 6 thousand 700 loans totaling 1 point 35 billion dollars in aggregate unpaid principal balance, making it the largest Fannie Mae NPL sale of the four in terms of UPB. The previous largest was 1 point 24 billion dollars in November 2015.