Charlotte Area Foreclosures Continue to Shrink...

As reported By: Graziella Steele  of the Meck Times on April 29, 2014

 

  Charlotte’s foreclosure inventory continued its decline in March, accounting for 1.2 percent of all Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia homes, according to CoreLogic. In February, CoreLogic reported that Charlotte homes in the foreclosure process measured 1.28 percent of all homes with an outstanding loan.
The company said that for the 12 months ending in March 2014, there were 7,511 completed foreclosures in the metropolitan statistical area while in the year ending March 2013 there were 8,836 completed foreclosures.
Delinquencies as a percentage of all mortgages were also down for the month. Mortgages that were 90 days or more delinquent accounted for 4.3 percent of all outstanding loans in March, down from 4.38 percent in February.
For North Carolina as a whole, foreclosure inventory was 1.0 percent of all homes with a loan in March, a 0.9 percentage point decrease from a year ago. Four percent of homes were listed as seriously delinquent.
March’s foreclosure inventory was down 37 percent nationally from a year ago, CoreLogic reported. Completed foreclosures were down 10 percent from the year before, but up 5.9 percent from February.
While the foreclosure picture is improving, it is not yet within historical norms. Across the country, there were 48,000 completed foreclosures in March. Prior to the decline in the housing market, foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month between 2000 and 2006, according to CoreLogic.
“While getting healthier, the housing market is a long way from being fully recovered,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “By way of comparison, distressed stock inventories are more than three times higher than the levels of the early 2000s.”
“Most states have made good progress clearing their foreclosure inventories, but states that have a longer judicial foreclosure process, such as Florida, New Jersey and New York, continue to struggle with elevated distressed stock inventories,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic.
Other findings from the report:
*Year-over-year declines in foreclosures reached more than 30 percent in 37 states including in Arizona, California and Utah, where decreases were more than 50 percent.
*The four states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in March 2014 were Florida with 122,000, Michigan with 49,000, Texas with 39,000 and California with 334,000.
*The four states with the highest rate of houses in the foreclosure process were New Jersey at 6.0 percent, Florida at 5.8 percent, New York at 4.6 percent and Maine at 3.2 percent.