60,000 completed foreclosures in June nationwide

SANTA ANA
July 31, 2012 5:52am

There were 60,000 completed foreclosures in the U.S. in June 2012 compared to 80,000 in June 2011 and 60,000 in May 2012, according to a report Tuesday from financial information company CoreLogic Inc. (NYSE: CLGX) of Santa Ana.

Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 3.7 million completed foreclosures across the country, according to CoreLogic’s figures. Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure.

Approximately 1.4 million homes, or 3.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage, were in the national foreclosure inventory as of June 2012 compared to 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent, in June 2011, the report says.

In California, the percentage of homes in foreclosure in June was 2.4 percent, down 0.3 percent from a year earlier.

Month-over-month, the national foreclosure inventory was unchanged from May 2012 to June 2012. The foreclosure inventory is the share of all mortgaged homes in some stage of the foreclosure process.

"While completed foreclosures and real-estate owned (REO) sales virtually offset each other over the past four months, producing static levels of foreclosure inventory for most of this year, they are beginning to diverge again," says Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. "Over the last two months REO sales declined while completed foreclosures leveled out. So we could see foreclosure inventory rising going forward."

Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic, contends that the decline in the flow of completed foreclosures to pre-financial crisis levels is more welcome news pointing to an emerging housing market recovery.

"However, we believe even more can be done to reduce the inventory of foreclosures by decreasing the level of regulatory uncertainty and expanding alternatives to foreclosure," he says.

The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in June 2012 were: California (125,000), Florida (91,000), Michigan (58,000), Texas (56,000) and Georgia (55,000). These five states account for 48.4 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally, according to CoreLogic.

Other highlights:

• The five states with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in June 2012 were: South Dakota (39), District of Columbia (81), Hawaii (449), North Dakota (565), and Maine (625).

• The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: Florida (11.5 percent), New Jersey (6.5 percent), New York (5.1 percent), Illinois (5.0 percent) and Nevada (4.8 percent).

• The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: Wyoming (0.6 percent), Alaska (0.8 percent), North Dakota (0.8 percent), Nebraska (0.9 percent) and South Dakota (1.2 percent).