Since the start of the financial crisis in September 2008, mortgage companies and banks have foreclosed on roughly 3.3 million homes with no end in sight.
According to new figures compiled by CoreLogic, servicers completed 69,000 foreclosures in January, a 6% increase from December. Compared to January 2010, though, completed foreclosures fell 14%.
Over the past 12 months 860,128 homes have been lost to foreclosure with California leading the way (155,000), followed by Florida (86,000), Arizona (65,000), Michigan (65,000) and Texas (57,000). The five account for 49.7% of all completed foreclosures nationally.
The five states with the lowest foreclosure rates were: Wyoming (0.7%), Alaska (0.8%), North Dakota (0.8%), Nebraska (1.1%) and Texas (1.3%).
“The pace of completed foreclosures is gradually increasing again, but the clearing ratio is falling as REO sales have slowed in the winter months. Judicial foreclosure states are continuing to process foreclosures more slowly than non-judicial foreclosure states,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist with CoreLogic.
According to the analytics firm, in January non-judicial foreclosure states completed almost twice as many foreclosures per 1000 active loans as judicial foreclosure states.
