Shadow Housing Inventory, Foreclosures Fall

The Mortgage Corner

CoreLogic reported the current residential shadow inventory as of July 2012 fell to 2.3 million units, representing a supply of six months. This was a 10.2 percent drop from July 2011, when shadow inventory stood at 2.6 million units, which is approximately the same level the country was experiencing in March 2009. Currently, the flow of new seriously delinquent (90 days or more) loans into the shadow inventory has been roughly offset by the equal volume of distressed (short and real estate owned) sales.

“The decline in shadow inventory has recently moderated reflecting the lower outflow of distressed sales over the past year,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “While a lower outflow of distressed sales helps alleviate downward home price pressure, long foreclosure timelines in some parts of the country causes these pools of shadow inventory to remain in limbo for an extended period of time.”

Data Highlights as of July 2012:

• As of July 2012, shadow inventory fell to 2.3 million units or six-months’ supply and represented just over three-fourths of the 2.7 million properties currently seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or in REO.
• Of the 2.3 million properties currently in the shadow inventory, 1 million units are seriously delinquent (2.9 months’ supply), 900,000 are in some stage of foreclosure (2.5-months’ supply) and 345,000 are already in REO (1.0-months’ supply).
• The dollar volume of shadow inventory was $382 billion as of July 2012, down from $397 billion a year ago and $385 billion last month.
• Serious delinquencies, which are the main driver of the shadow inventory, declined the most from April 2012 to July 2012 in Arizona (3.2 percent), Pennsylvania (2.8 percent), New Jersey (2.3 percent), Delaware (2.2 percent) and Maine (2.2 percent).
• As of July 2012, Florida, California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey make up 45 percent of all distressed properties in the country.

Graph: Calculated Risk (1/06-7/12)

CoreLogic also released its latest National Foreclosure Report which provides monthly data on completed foreclosures, foreclosure inventory and 90+ delinquency rates.

• The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in August 2012 were: California (110,000), Florida (92,000), Michigan (62,000), Texas (58,000) and Georgia (55,000). These five states account for 48.1 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally.
• The five states with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in August 2012 were: South Dakota (25), District of Columbia (113), Hawaii (435), North Dakota (564) and Maine (612).
• The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: Florida (11.0 percent), New Jersey (6.5 percent), New York (5.2 percent), Illinois (4.8 percent) and Nevada (4.6 percent).
• The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: Wyoming (0.5 percent), Alaska (0.8 percent), North Dakota (0.8 percent), Nebraska (0.9 percent) and South Dakota (1.1 percent).

Graph: Calculated Risk

Corelogic said that home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased on a year-over-year basis by 4.6 percent in August 2012 compared to August 2011. This change represents the biggest year-over-year increase since July 2006. On a month-over-month basis, including distressed sales, home prices increased by 0.3 percent in August 2012 compared to July 2012.

So we see the Federal Reserve’s commitment to keep interest rates at historic lows for as long as it takes to revive the housing market, and bring down the unemployment rate to more acceptable levels, is already showing results.

Harlan Green © 2012