Servicers completed 60,000 foreclosures in June, which is the same amount from the previous month but down 24% from last year, according to data from CoreLogic.
In June 2011, 80,000 foreclosures were finalized.
Since the beginning of the financial crisis in September 2008, there have been approximately 3.7 million foreclosures across the country, the Santa Ana, Calif.-based analytic provider said.
“The decline in the flow of completed foreclosures to prefinancial crisis levels is more welcome news pointing to an emerging housing market recovery,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic.
“However, we believe even more can be done to reduce the inventory of foreclosures by decreasing the level of regulatory uncertainty and expanding alternatives to foreclosure.”
Over the last year, California completed the most foreclosures with 125,000, followed by Florida (91,000), Michigan (58,000), Texas (56,000) and Georgia (55,000). CoreLogic said these five states account for 48% of all foreclosures nationwide.
Through June 2012, nearly 1.4 million homes—3.4% of all homes with a mortgage—were in the national foreclosure inventory. This figure is the same from May, but is down 0.1% from a year ago when 1.5 million properties were on the market.
The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory of all mortgaged homes were Florida at 11.5%, New Jersey at 6.5%, New York at 5.1%, Illinois at 5% and Nevada at 4.8%.
“While completed foreclosures and REO sales virtually offset each other over the past four months, producing static levels of foreclosure inventory for most of this year, they are beginning to diverge again,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.
“Over the last two months, REO sales declined while completed foreclosures leveled out. So we could see foreclosure inventory rising going forward.”
