U.S. foreclosures fall 18 percent, but New York state sees increase: CoreLogic

The national foreclosure inventory showed a year-over-year decrease of 18 percent, according to Corelogic’s National Foreclosure Report. In New York state, however, the year-over-year foreclosure inventory increased by 0.5 percent. New York was also one of the five states — joining Florida, New Jersey, Nevada and Illinois — with the highest number of foreclosures as a percentage of homes with a mortgage, with 5.1 percent of mortgaged homes here in foreclosure.

Nationally, though, the decrease in foreclosure activity indicates a path to recovery. “The continued fall in completed foreclosures is a positive supply-side contribution in many regions of the U.S.,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “We still have a long way to go to return to historic norms, but this trend is firmly in the right direction.”

There were 55,000 residential foreclosures in the U.S. in November 2012, compared to 72,000 in November 2011, a year-over-year-decrease of 23 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures fell from 59,000 in October 2012 — a decrease of 6 percent. New York state saw 4,394 foreclosures in the 12 months ending November 2012.

Prior to the 2007 housing market decline, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month between 2000 and 2006. Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately four million completed foreclosures across the country.—Hiten Samtani