The number of properties lost to foreclosure last month skyrocketed by more than half — though the surge was attributed to mortgage servicers clearing out their distressed inventory.
New foreclosures were initiated on 48,838 U.S. home loans during the first month of the year — plummeting from 59,358 in December.
In January of last year, the foreclosure process was started on 57,259 residential properties.
The numbers were reported Thursday by ReatlyTrac.
California exceeded all other states with 5,740 foreclosures initiated in January 2015. Florida followed with 4,464, then Texas’ 3,122, Illinois’ 2,521 and New York’s 2,424.
RealtyTrac said no foreclosures were started in North Dakota — the lowest number of any state.
Including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — filings were made on 119,888 U.S. properties during January 2015. Total filings worsened from 114,222 a month earlier but slipped from 124,419 a year earlier.
Total filings were 20,415
in Florida, the highest number in the country. Next was 17,603 in California, then 7,733 in Illinois, 5,874 in Ohio and 4,735 in Texas.
With only three total filings, North Dakota had the fewest.
A far more telling metric is the foreclosure rate, which last month was one filing for each 1,102 U.S. properties — modestly improving from one-in-1,058 in the first month of 2014.
Florida had the worst foreclosure rate in the country: one-in-441. Not far behind was Nevada, with a one-in-495 rate. No. 3 Maryland’s rate was one-in-611, followed by one-in-684 in Illinois and one-in-773 in New Jersey.
The most-favorable rate was North Dakota’s one filing for each 108,237 properties.
Moving on to completed foreclosures, U.S. volume soared to 37,292 in January from
just 24,005 the previous month. In the same month last year, there were 30,226 real-estate-owned filings.
“The year-over-year increase in REOs in January was the first annual increase nationwide following 25 consecutive months of declines, getting the foreclosure spring cleaning we anticipated in our last foreclosure report off to a quick start in 2015,” RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist stated in the report. “Meanwhile, the number of future foreclosure auctions scheduled in January continued to increase in many states, foreshadowing more foreclosure spring cleaning to come in the next several months in those states.”
With 7,397 repossessions, Florida topped the list. A distant second was California’s 5,181. Illinois followed with 2,195 completed foreclosures, then Ohio’s 2,005 and Michigan’s 1,760.
RealtyTrac noted that 21 states saw an increase in repossessions compared to January 2014.
Just one REO filing was made in North Dakota.
