Year on year US foreclosure inventory falls for 43rd month in a row

Foreclosure inventory in the United States has fallen for 43 consecutive months, year on year, down to just 1.3% of homes.

The latest data from CoreLogic shows that national foreclosure inventory fell by 27.4% in May compared with the previous year to approximately 491,000 homes.

Also in May 2015, the 12 month sum of completed foreclosures fell by 18.1% to 528,000, since May 2014 while the seriously delinquent inventory fell to 1.3 million loans, a 22.7% year on year decline.

There were 47 states that posted year on year declines in the foreclosure inventory, and 27 of those states had decreases of more than 20% while only three states had year on year increases.

The five states with the largest year on year drop in the foreclosure inventory were Florida with a fall of 47%, Connecticut at 36.5%, Idaho at 35.6, Washington at 35.3% and Illinois at 34.5%.

The District of Columbia saw a 22.5% rise and the three states with foreclosure inventory growth were Massachusetts up 22.4%, Wyoming up 18.2% and South Dakota up 1.1%.

Judicial foreclosure states continued to have higher foreclosure rates in May 2015 than non-judicial states, averaging 2.2% and 0.7% percent, respectively.

The data also shows that the foreclosure rate for judicial states peaked in February 2012 at 5.4% while non-judicial states experienced peak foreclosure rates of 2.5% in January 2011.

As of May 2015 some 42% of outstanding mortgages were in judicial states, but 71% of total loans in foreclosure were in those states.