Homeowners (and investors in the banks holding their mortgages) received a double dose of good news Monday, when residential property data provider CoreLogic (CLGX) announced that:
- The number of completed foreclosures in America dropped 30% year-over-year in October, as compared to October 2012.
- Completed foreclosures trended down sequentially from September, falling 25.6%.
- The inventory of houses in some stage of the foreclosure process, the so-called "foreclosure inventory," dropped even faster -- down 31% year-over-year.
According to CoreLogic's data, 48,000 homes were foreclosed upon in October, versus 68,000 completed foreclosures in October 2012.
Granted, even 48,000 foreclosures is a big number relative to the 21,000 foreclosures per month CoreLogic says was the average between 2000 and 2006. Then again, back then, home prices that seemed only to go up helped to keep foreclosures a rarity.
Expect them to get rarer still in the months to come. With only about 879,000 homes in the U.S. in some stage of foreclosure today (down from 1.3 million homes one year ago), the trend toward fewer and fewer completed foreclosures appears intact. As CoreLogic CEO Anand Nallathambi pointed out in the company press release: "every state posted a year-over-year decline in completed foreclosures [in October], which is positive news."
As of today, only 2.2% of all homes under mortgage are in the process of being foreclosed upon, says CoreLogic.
