Completed U.S. Foreclosures See Near 25,000 Annual Drop in August

CoreLogic has released its August National Foreclosure Report with a supplement featuring quarterly shadow inventory data as of July 2013. In August, there were 48,000 completed foreclosures in the U.S., down from 72,000 in August 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 34 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures increased 1.3 percent, from 47,000 in July 2013. Overall residential shadow inventory, as of July 2013, was 1.9 million homes, accounting for a value of $293 billion, representing a supply of 3.7 months. This was down 22 percent from a year ago, when it was at 2.4 million; and down 38 percent from its peak in 2010, when it reached 3 million homes. As a basis of comparison to the 48,000 completed foreclosures reported for August 2013, prior to the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006. Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 4.5 million completed foreclosures across the country. As of August 2013, approximately 939,000 homes in the U.S. were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory, compared to 1.4 million in August 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 33 percent. Month over month, the foreclosure inventory was down 3.2 percent from August 2013 to July 2013. The foreclosure inventory as of August 2013 represented 2.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage compared to 3.3 percent in August 2012. As of July 2013, shadow inventory was under two million properties, representing 3.7 months’ supply or 85 percent of the 2.2 million properties that were seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or REO. Of the fewer than two million properties in the shadow inventory (Figures one and two), 874,000 properties were seriously delinquent (1.8 months’ supply), 661,000 were in some stage of foreclosure (1.3 months’ supply) and 318,000 were already in REO (0.6 months’ supply). The value of shadow inventory was $293 billion as of July 2013, down from $380 billion in July 2012.