Despite another month-over-month uptick,
foreclosures continue to decline on an annual basis and, according to a report
from CoreLogic today, are now down 52 percent from the peak in 2010. The company's National foreclosure Report for March showed that foreclosures
increased 6.2 percent from February to March 2013 but the March activity was
15.8 percent below that of one year earlier.
Fifty-five thousand foreclosures were
completed in March compared to 52,000 in February and 66,000 in March
2012. By way of comparison, during the
pre-recession years of 2000 to 2006 foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month on a
national basis. Since the foreclosure
crisis began in the fall of 2008 there have been approximately 4.2 million
foreclosures and there were 735,000 over the 12 month period ending in March.
The states with the highest number of
foreclosures over that 12 month period were Florida (103,000), California
(83,000) and Michigan (70,000). However
when foreclosures are viewed in the context of the number of outstanding
mortgages Michigan led the nation with one completed foreclosure in the past 12
months for every 19 mortgages followed by Arizona with one in 27 and Florida at
one in 28. The national average was one
in 55 mortgages.

The foreclosure inventory - the number
of homes in some stage of foreclosure, currently stands at around 1.1 million
homes, down 23 percent from the 1.5 million homes in foreclosure in March 2012
and a 1.9 percent monthly decline. This inventory
represents 2.8 percent of all mortgaged homes in the U.S. compared to 3.5
percent in February 2012 (sic). This was
the 17th consecutive month when the inventory declined on an annual
basis.
Florida leads the states with nearly 9.7
percent of its homes in some state of foreclosure followed at a distance by New
Jersey (7.3 percent) and New York (5.0).
Of the ten states with the highest percentage of homes in foreclosure
all but two, Nevada and Rhode Island, are states using the judicial foreclosure
process. The lowest foreclosure inventories
by percent are all in sparsely populated states - Wyoming (0.5 percent), Alaska
(0.7 percent), and North Dakota (0.7 percent).

The inventory has declined in 46 states
with some of the most troubled states, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois,
and Nevada, experiencing the largest decreases, all in excess of 6 percent.

Anand Naliathambi, president and CEO of
CoreLogic said, "For 17 consecutive months, foreclosures have declined year
over year across the U.S. Although we
still have more than a million homes in some stage of foreclosure, this trend,
combined with rising home prices, is another signal of a gradually improving
housing market."