[1]While foreclosure completions and foreclosure inventory followed nationwide patterns of decline in Florida for October, the Sunshine State still led all states in both categories during the month, according to CoreLogic [2]'s October 2014 National Foreclosure Report [3] released on Thursday.
Florida's foreclosure inventory, meaning properties that were in any stage of foreclosure, represented 4.1 percent of all mortgages in the state during October, according to CoreLogic. This was a year-over-year decline of 3 full percentage points, but was still way above the national average of 1.6 percent for October. Florida's serious delinquency rate, meaning the percentage of mortgages that were 90 or more days overdue, was at the highest among states in October at 8.4 percent – exactly double the national rate of 4.2 percent, CoreLogic reported.
The nearly 118,000 completed foreclosures for the 12-month period ending on October 31, 2014 in Florida was also the highest total among states for the month by more than double – Michigan was second with 45,000, according to CoreLogic. Florida's completed foreclosures accounted for 21 percent of the approximately 561,000 foreclosure completions in the U.S. for the 12-month period, according to CoreLogic.
Two of the two three metropolitan areas in the U.S. with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12-month period ending in October were located in Florida, according to CoreLogic. The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area was first with 18,485 foreclosure completions in the 12 months, followed by Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell with 16,341, and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford was third with 15,507. The number of foreclosure completions declined year-over-year in Tampa and Orlando by 2.9 percentage points and 3.3 percentage points in October, respectively. Tampa still had the highest serious delinquency rate of any metro area in the nation, at 9.4 percent, while Orlando was second with 8.1 percent.