Completed foreclosures, foreclosure inventory, and serious delinquencies all experienced double-digit declines again in May, falling even further toward pre-recession levels, according to CoreLogic's May 2015 National Foreclosure Report released Tuesday. On a year-over-year basis, foreclosure inventory declined by 27 percent nationwide, down to about 491,000 homes. Completed foreclosures, which are an indication of homes actually lost to foreclosure, totaled 41,000 in May – a decline of 19.2 percent from the previous May, when 51,000 completed foreclosures were reported.
The number of seriously delinquent mortgages nationwide, which CoreLogic defines as those 90 days or more past due or in foreclosure or REO, dropped by 22.7 percent year-over-year in May down to about 1.3 million mortgages. This number represents about 3.5 percent of all residential mortgages nationwide, the lowest serious delinquency rate since January 2008. Florida topped all states in completed foreclosures over the 12-month period ending May 31, 2015, with 104 thousand, nearly one-fifth of the national total of 528,000 for that period.
Investors bidding on properties online and at live events nationwide appear to prefer flipping these purchased properties more than renting them. The data collected in Auction.com's second quarter 2015 Real Estate Investor Activity Report, a nationwide survey of real estate investors, determined that flipping is still going strong, edging out the hold-to-rent strategy for the third consecutive quarter. That trend that has been consistent since Auction.com began tracking investor intent.