Completed foreclosures declined in May from a year ago but were up from the previous month, according to the latest data from CoreLogic.
The Santa Ana, Calif.-based analytics provider released numbers showing there were 63,000 completed foreclosures in May, compared to 77,000 finished foreclosures during the same time period last year.
However, May’s overall total is 1,000 more completed foreclosures than April.
Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, approximately 3.6 million foreclosures have been completed nationwide, CoreLogic said.
“There were more than 819,000 completed foreclosures over the past year, or an average of 2,440 completed foreclosures every day over the last 12 months,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Although the level of completed foreclosures remains high, it is down 27% from a peak of 1.1 million in all of 2010.”
The five states that had the greatest number of completed foreclosures in the last 12 months (ending in May 2012) were California with 133,000, Florida (92,000), Michigan (60,000), Texas (58,000) and Georgia (57,000). These five states accounted for nearly half of all completed foreclosures across the country.
Nearly 1.4 million homes, or 3.4% of all properties with a mortgage, were in the national foreclosure inventory through May 2012, an amount unchanged from April. A year ago, there were 1.5 million homes that made up the foreclosure inventory.
Even though foreclosure inventory levels remained steady month-over-month, there have been dramatic shifts at the state level. For example, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan each experienced at least a 20% decline in the foreclosure inventory from May 2011. Meanwhile, year-over-year foreclosure inventories are rising in many judicial states, most notably Hawaii, Connecticut and New York at 1.2%, 1.2% and 0.8%, respectively.
CoreLogic said the states that contain the highest foreclosure inventory levels are Florida with 11.9%, New Jersey with 6.6%, Illinois with 5.3%, New York at 5% and Nevada with 4.9%.
