Foreclosure Inventory Plummets Year-Over-Year in August

August saw a 32.8 percent decline in foreclosure inventory from August 2013, marking the 34th consecutive month with a year-over-year decrease, according to CoreLogic's August National Foreclosure Report released on Thursday.

According to CoreLogic, 1.6 percent of all residential mortgages, a total of approximately 629,000 homes, were in some phase of the foreclosure process in August. These numbers represent a significant downturn from the same month a year ago, when CoreLogic reported that 936,000 homes were in some stage of foreclosure, comprising 2.4 percent of all residential mortgages nationwide.

"Clearly there has been a large improvement in the market in the last few years, but five years into the economic expansion the foreclosure inventory remains at nearly three times the normal level," said Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic. "Since homeownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been seven million completed foreclosures, which account for 15 percent of all mortgages."

CoreLogic reported 45,000 completed foreclosures in August nationwide, down 22.2 percent from the 58,000 that were reported in August 2013. The report noted that prior to the decline of the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month.

The rate at which mortgage loans were seriously delinquent (90 days or more past due or in some stage of foreclosure) was reported at 4.3 percent for August, according to CoreLogic. In all, 1,646 loans were seriously delinquent in August, a decline of 1.7 percent from July and 21.8 percent from August 2013.

Foreclosure inventory declined by 2.6 percent from July to August, according to CoreLogic. Completed foreclosures dropped by 1.1 percent month-over-month.

In August, the 12-month sum of completed foreclosures for the period ending in August 2014 was at 576,000, its lowest point since December 2007. Like foreclosure inventory, the 12-month sum of completed foreclosures has declined for 34 months in a row, according to CoreLogic.