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Missouri Foreclosure Rate Tumbles in November

Missouri Foreclosure Rate [1]A steep decline in foreclosure filings in Missouri has dropped the Show Me State from the middle of the pack down to having one of the lowest foreclosure rates among states in November, according to RealtyTrac [2]'s U.S. Foreclosure Market Report [3] for November 2014 released late last week.

Foreclosure filings, which include notices of default, foreclosure starts, and lender repossessions, declined in Missouri by 42.1 percent from October to November and by 28.6 percent from November 2013 to November 2014, according to RealtyTrac. Whereas Missouri ranked 27th among states in October with one foreclosure filing for every 1,697 housing units, that average plummeted in November down to one for every 2,933 housing units, dropping Missouri down to 41st. The only states with lower foreclosure rates in November were North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Vermont, Mississippi, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Kansas, according to RealtyTrac.

The total number of foreclosure filings in Missouri tumbled from 1,597 in October to 924 in November out of 2.7 million residential housing units in the state, which has a population of almost 6 million, according to RealtyTrac. Foreclosure inventory accounted for 0.3 percent of all housing units in November, RealtyTrac reported. The main reason for the downward surge of foreclosure activity in Missouri in November was the decline in REO activity, or lender repossessions, which fell from 788 in October to 302 in November.

RealtyTrac VP Daren Blomquist said one reason for the large October-to-November decline in foreclosure activity Missouri that the state was coming down from spike of 181 percent month-over-month from September to October. However, Missouri has experienced a lengthy trend of declining foreclosure activity. Foreclosure inventory has increased year-over-year in Missouri only twice in the last 45 months since March 2011, Blomquist said, and the main reason is because the loans are performing better.

"Slowly but surely, the market's winding through the rat's next of toxic loans and moving past those," Blomquist said. "The loans that originated since 2009 are performing much better and not foreclosing at such high rates."

November also saw a significant month-over-month decrease in the number of notice of trustee's sales (filings by notice announcing a public auction) in Missouri, down from 809 to 622,a decline of 23 percent, according to RealtyTrac.