The number of distressed residential borrowers to lose their homes to foreclosure last month was down. Serious delinquency held steady.
The 90-day delinquency rate on U.S. home loans was 4.3 percent as of the end of July, CoreLogic Inc. reported. The rate was unmoved from the previous month.
But the rate of serious delinquency was improved compared to the same month last year, when a 5.4 percent rate was in place.
Last month’s 90-day rate was highest in New Jersey at 9.4 percent. No. 2 Florida was at 9.1 percent.
Third was New York’s 7.4 percent, then Maryland’s 6.2 percent and 5.9 percent in Nevada.
North Dakota had the lowest rate of 1.1 percent.
The foreclosure inventory was 640,000 as of July, off from 662,000 the prior month and way down from 976,000 twelve months earlier.
CoreLogic President and Chief Executive Officer Anand Nallathambi predicted that the foreclosure inventory will dip to as low as 500,000 by the end of 2014.
The national foreclosure inventory rate was 1.7 percent, up from 1.6 percent in June. But it improved compared to July 2013, when the foreclosure rate was 2.4 percent.
New Jersey’s 5.7 percent foreclosure inventory rate was the highest in the country. Florida followed at 4.8 percent, then New York’s 4.3 percent, Hawaii’s 3.0 percent and Maine’s 2.7 percent. At 0.4 percent, Alaska shared to lowest rate with Nebraska.
Just 45,000 foreclosures were completed during July, fewer than the 49,000 real-estate-owned filings a month prior.
A year earlier there were 57,000 REO filings.
CoreLogic continued to maintain perspective by highlighting the 21,000-per-month foreclosure pace that was in place from 2000 though 2006.
For the seven months ended July 31, 2014, repossessions numbered 320,000.
Since the financial crisis erupted in September 2008, mortgage servicers have completed 5.1 million foreclosures.
