Finally, Some Exceptionally Good News About Foreclosures

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Real Estate analytics firm Core Logic announced Wednesday that there were a total of 620,111 foreclosures across the country in 2013, a 24% decline from 2012 when 820,000 homes were foreclosed upon.

Despite the marked decline in the number of foreclosures year over year, foreclosure activity remains well above its normal rate of 21,000 foreclosures per month between 2000 and 2006. “Clearly, 2013 was a transitional year for residential property in the United States.” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “We are turning a long-awaited corner.”

As with the real estate market in general, the pace of foreclosure activity varied greatly depending on location. Florida lead the country with 118,906 foreclosures in 2013, while booming North Dakota saw just 417. Looking forward, many states like New York, Illinois, and Florida still have many foreclosures to complete. Core Logic tracks what it refers to as ” the foreclosure inventory,” or homes that are in some stage of of foreclosure. Looking forward the states that will continue to have heavy foreclosure activity include Florida, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Maine.

The map below shows the percentage of homes with a mortgage that are in some stage of foreclosure.

foreclosure map

The states which have higher foreclosure inventory are mostly those that allow judicial intervention in the process, which tends to slow down the pace at which the market can move through inventory.