by Calculated Risk on 1/29/2014 09:52:00 AM

From CoreLogic: The foreclosure inventory fell 31 percent nationally in 2013

CoreLogic® ... today released its December National Foreclosure Report, which provides data on completed U.S. foreclosures and the national foreclosure inventory. According to CoreLogic, there were 620,111 completed foreclosures across the country in 2013 compared to 820,498 in 2012, a decrease of 24 percent. For the month of December, there were 45,000 completed foreclosures, down from 52,000 in December 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 14 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures decreased 4.1 percent, from 47,000 reported in November 2013.

Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 4.8 million completed foreclosures across the country. As a basis of comparison, prior to the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.

As of December 2013, approximately 837,000 homes in the United States were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory, compared to 1.2 million in December 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 31 percent. The foreclosure inventory as of December 2013 represented 2.1 percent of all homes with a mortgage compared to 3.0 percent in December 2012. The foreclosure inventory was down 2.7 percent from November 2013 to December 2013.

“The foreclosure inventory fell by more than 30 percent in December on a year-over-year basis, twice the decline from a year ago,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “The decline indicates that the distressed foreclosure inventory is healing at an accelerating rate heading into 2014.”
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph from CoreLogic shows the foreclosure inventory by state (Foreclosure inventory are properties in the foreclosure process). The foreclosure inventory is still high in some judicial foreclosure states. From CoreLogic:

The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Florida (6.7 percent), New Jersey (6.5 percent), New York (4.9 percent), Connecticut (3.6 percent) and Maine (3.6 percent).