The share of home loans that are considered seriously delinquent continued to fall, as did the number of foreclosures.
Residential loan delinquency of at least 90 days, including loans in foreclosure and real-estate-owned assets, ended August at 5.3 percent, CoreLogic Inc. reported Tuesday. That worked out to around 2.1 million past-due loans.
The rate of late payments was down from July, when it stood at 5.4 percent.
In fact, 90-day delinquency has fallen each month since it was 6.4 percent in December 2012.
The rate of serious delinquency was 6.8 percent in August 2012.
Florida’s delinquency rate was worse than any other state: 12.4 percent. Close behind was New Jersey, where the 90-day rate was 10.8 percent. After that was 8.6 percent in Nevada, 8.0 percent in New York and 7.3 percent in Maryland.
The shadow inventory — including properties with loans that are seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or held as REO assets by servicers — closed out July at 1.9 million homes valued at $293 billion. That represented a 3.7-month supply.
At the same point in 2012, the shadow inventory was 2.4 million homes.
“Over the past year, the value of the U.S. shadow inventory dropped by $87 billion — a sign of increased normalcy in the housing market,” CoreLogic President and Chief Executive Officer Anand Nallathambi stated in the report. “With a year-over-year decrease of 22 percent in July, the shadow inventory has now declined steadily for 10 consecutive months.”
As of Aug. 31, CoreLogic said that around 939,000 homes were in some stage of foreclosure.
The foreclosure inventory was off from 949,000 in July and 1,400,000 in August 2012.
The foreclosure inventory rate was unchanged between July and August at 2.4 percent but was better than 3.3 percent in the same month last year.
U.S. mortgage servicers completed 48,000 foreclosures during the most recent month, slightly more than the downwardly revised 47,000 repossessions in July.
A year earlier, 72,000 foreclosures were completed. CoreLogic revised the total up from 59,000 originally reported for August 2012.
“A surge in completed foreclosures and a rise in the foreclosure inventory is unlikely given continued house price improvements and shortages of supply in many markets,” Dr. Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, said in the report.
