1 in 622 mortgages were foreclosed on in the past year

66,000 foreclosures completed in April

According to CoreLogic’s National Foreclosure Report for April, 66,000 foreclosures were completed in April, virtually unchanged from March levels, but down substantially from April 2011’s 78,000 completed foreclosures. CoreLogic reports that since the housing meltdown began in September 2008, roughly 3.6 million foreclosures have been completed.

Approximately 1.4 million homes, or 3.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage, were in the national foreclosure inventory as of April 2012 compared to 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent, in April 2011 and 1.4 million, or 3.4 percent, in March 2012.

[ba-pullquote align=”right”]”There were more than 830,000 completed foreclosures over the past year or, in other words, one completed foreclosure for every 622 mortgaged homes.” -Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.[/ba-pullquote]”There were more than 830,000 completed foreclosures over the past year or, in other words, one completed foreclosure for every 622 mortgaged homes,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Non-judicial foreclosure markets, like Nevada, Arizona and California, completed two and a half times as many foreclosures over the past year as judicial foreclosure states.”

“The inventory of homes in foreclosure in judicial foreclosure states is growing, but this increase is being more than offset by declining inventories in non-judicial states where the processing timelines to clear a foreclosure are shorter,” said Anand Nallathambi, chief executive officer of CoreLogic. “Nationally the inventory of homes in foreclosure decreased 0.1 percent from what it was a year ago at this time, and has leveled off over the first four months of 2012.”

Five states account for nearly half of the total

The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in April 2012 were California (142,000), Florida (92,000), Michigan (60,000), Texas (58,000), and Georgia (57,000). These five states account for 48.8 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally.

[ba-pullquote align=”right”]”Non-judicial foreclosure markets, like Nevada, Arizona and California, completed two and a half times as many foreclosures over the past year as judicial foreclosure states.”[/ba-pullquote]The five states with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in April 2012 were South Dakota (62), District of Columbia (162), North Dakota (541), West Virginia (598), and Hawaii (601).

The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Florida (12.0 percent), New Jersey (6.7 percent), Illinois (5.3 percent), Nevada (5.0 percent) and New York (5.0 percent).

The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory were Wyoming (0.7 percent), Alaska (0.8 percent), North Dakota (0.9 percent), Nebraska (1.0 percent) and South Dakota (1.4 percent).