Housing

June Foreclosure Inventories Highest in New Jersey, New York, Hawaii

Paul Ausick

Published: August 9, 2016 10:15 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 4:47 am

In the month of June, 38,000 U.S. home foreclosures were completed, up 5.1% month over month and down 4.9% from a total of 40,000 in June 2015, according to CoreLogic. The research firm notes that the current foreclosure inventory totals 1% of all homes with a mortgage in the United States, down from 1.3% in June of last year.

The number of U.S. homes currently in some stage of foreclosure totals approximately 375,000, compared with 507,000 in June 2015. That represents a decline in the national foreclosure inventory of 25.9% compared with June a year ago.

The four states and the District of Columbia with the largest foreclosed inventory as a percentage of mortgaged properties are New Jersey (3.4%), New York (3.1%), Hawaii (2.0%), D.C. (2.0%) and Maine (1.9%). The five states with the lowest inventories of foreclosed properties are Minnesota (0.3%), Colorado (0.3%), Utah (0.3%), Michigan (0.3%) and Nebraska (0.3%).

The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures in the past 12 months were Florida (60,000), Michigan (47,000), Texas (27,000), Ohio (23,000) and California (22,000). The five states with the fewest foreclosures in the prior 12 months through June were District of Columbia (179), North Dakota (321), West Virginia (487), Alaska (639) and Montana (675).

CoreLogic CEO Anand Nallathambi said:

The impact of the inexorable reduction over the past several years in both foreclosure trends and serious delinquencies is driving the long-awaited return to more historic norms for the U.S. housing market. We expect the combination of continued home price appreciation of more than 5 percent and rising employment levels in the year ahead will help cement the gains we have had and perhaps accelerate them.

Of the 10 largest U.S. metro areas, the foreclosure inventory was highest in the New York area, at 3.0%. The Miami metro area’s foreclosure inventory totaled 2.3%, and the Las Vegas area had the third-highest total at 1.4%. The lowest totals were posted in the San Francisco (0.1%) area and in Denver (0.2%).

Florida, Tennessee, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Maryland all posted year-over-year declines of more than 30% in foreclosure inventory. Minnesota’s foreclosure inventory has fallen 39.3% in the past 12 months, and Michigan’s has dropped by 37.3%.

According to CoreLogic, the current foreclosure rate of 1% is the same as the October 2007 rate, and the foreclosure inventory has declined every month for the past 56 months. Before the collapse in the housing market in 2007, the average number of foreclosures completed in a month was 21,000.