The national foreclosure inventory fell by 30% year over year in November, according to CoreLogic.
As of November, the foreclosure inventory represented 325,000, or 0.8% of all homes with a mortgage, down from 465,000 homes, or 1.2%, a year earlier, CoreLogic said Tuesday.
Similarly, the number of completed foreclosures fell by 25.9% during the same time span to 26,000. The number of mortgages in serious delinquency, meaning they were 90 days or more past due including loans in foreclosure or REO, decreased 22.1% from November 2015 to November 2016 to 1 million mortgages, or 2.5%, in serious delinquency.
The continued drop in defaults in part stems from rising home prices, according to CoreLogic CEO and President Anand Nallathambi. But the serious delinquency rate, though down overall, varies from state to state.
"The decline in serious delinquency has been substantial, but the default rate remains high in select markets," Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, said in a news release. "Serious delinquency rates were the highest in New Jersey and New York at 5.6% and 5%, respectively. In contrast, the lowest delinquency rate occurred in Colorado at 0.9% where a strong job market and home-price growth have enabled more homeowners to stay current."
