CoreLogic: R.I. foreclosure inventory drops in August

CORELOGIC reported that nationwide, there were 45,000 completed foreclosures in August, with 1,522 in Rhode Island. The percentage of Ocean State homes with a mortgage at some point in the foreclosure process totaled 1.9 percent in the month. / COURTESY CORELOGIC
CORELOGIC reported that nationwide, there were 45,000 completed foreclosures in August, with 1,522 in Rhode Island. The percentage of Ocean State homes with a mortgage at some point in the foreclosure process totaled 1.9 percent in the month. / COURTESY CORELOGIC

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island’s foreclosure inventory decreased in August, and the state also registered fewer completed foreclosures, according to information released Thursday by data firm CoreLogic.
Out of all mortgaged homes, Rhode Island’s foreclosure inventory in August was 1.9 percent, a 0.5 percentage point drop from the prior year. (Foreclosure inventory is defined as the number of mortgaged homes in some stage of the foreclosure process.)
At the same time, there were 1,522 completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in August in the Ocean State, compared with 1,605 during the same period in 2013.
Often times a leading indicator of future foreclose activity, the serious delinquency rate for Rhode Island in August stood at 5.6 percent. (Serious delinquency means mortgage loans are 90 or more days late.)

The national foreclosure inventory rate stood at 1.6 percent in August, a decline of seven-tenths of a percentage point from a year ago. That percentage of homes in the foreclosure process translated into 629,000 homes in foreclosure inventory, representing a decline in the number of homes in the process of 32.8 percent.
CoreLogic said August represents 19 consecutive months of at least a 20 percent year-over-year decline in the national inventory of foreclosed homes.
The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: Nebraska (0.4 percent), Alaska (0.5 percent), Arizona (0.5 percent), North Dakota (0.5 percent) and Wyoming (0.5 percent).
The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory rate were: New Jersey (5.8 percent), Florida (4.6 percent), New York (4.2 percent), Hawaii (3 percent) and Maine (2.7 percent).

Nationwide completed foreclosures fell to 45,000 in August, 13,000 less than the previous year, according to the data tracker, although the total did represent an increase from the July total of 44,000.

Before the housing market decline in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006. Since the 2008 financial crisis, there have been approximately 5.2 million completed foreclosures across the country.

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The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in August were: Florida (121,000), Michigan (43,000), Texas (36,000), California (32,000) and Georgia (28,000), in total nearly half of all completed foreclosures in the nation.
South Dakota had the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in August at 65, followed by the District of Columbia (110), North Dakota (296), West Virginia (462) and Wyoming (650).

“Clearly there has been a large improvement in the market the last few years, but five years into the economic expansion the foreclosure inventory remains at nearly three times the normal level,” Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic, said in a statement. “Since homeownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been 7 million completed foreclosures, which account for 15 percent of all mortgages.”

Massachusetts had 2,531 completed foreclosures for the 12-month period, compared with 3,297 the year before. Its foreclosure inventory was 1.2 percent, a decline of half a percentage point from August 2013.

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