Foreclosures drop significantly in 2013

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The percentage of mortgaged Charlotte-area homes that were in the foreclosure process dropped by about 44 percent from December 2012 to December 2013.

The foreclosure inventory at year’s end was 1.5 percent of all homes with a mortgage, down from 2.7 the previous December, according to real estate analytics provider CoreLogic. Another 4.6 percent of mortgaged properties were in serious delinquency.

Between December 2012 and December 2013, 7,982 foreclosures were completed in the Charlotte region, meaning the homes were sold at auction to third parties or, having failed to do so, became the property of the lender.

The December National Foreclosure report found that 620,111 properties were foreclosed on last year nationwide. Compared to 2012, the number of foreclosed properties dropped 24 percent from 820,498 total properties.

December’s monthly completed foreclosures measured 45,000 homes across the country, a decrease of 4.1 percent from November.

Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, about 4.8 million foreclosures have been completed across the country. Prior to the crash of housing market in 2007, an there were an average 21,000 completed foreclosures per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.

As of December 2013, roughly 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 in December 2013 accounted for 2.1 percent of all homes with a mortgage, lower than the 3.0 percent inventory in December 2012.

The company measures foreclosure inventory as the number of mortgaged homes placed in the foreclosure process by the mortgage lender. It includes only first liens in its analysis.

Month-over-month numbers show foreclosure inventory slowly decreasing also, with 2.7 percent fewer homes facing foreclosure in December than in November.

“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 in a statement. “The decline indicates that the distressed foreclosure inventory is healing at an accelerating rate heading into 2014.”

“Clearly, 2013 was a transitional year for residential property in the United States. Higher home prices and lower shadow inventory levels, together with a slowly improving economy, are hopeful signals that we are turning a long-awaited corner,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “The housing market should continue to heal in 2014, but we expect progress to remain very slow.”

Other findings from the December report:

• The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in December were Florida (119,000), Michigan (53,000), California (39,000), Texas (39,000) and Georgia (35,000). Those five states accounted for almost half of all foreclosures nationally.
• The lowest numbers of completed foreclosures for the year were in the District of Columbia (63), North Dakota (417), Hawaii (493), West Virginia (505) and Wyoming (759).
• 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), and Connecticut and Maine (3.6 percent).
• The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Wyoming (0.4 percent), Alaska (0.5 percent), and North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska (0.6 percent).