5 States with Highest, Lowest Foreclosure Rates

Daily Real Estate News | Thursday, January 22, 2015

Foreclosures are falling, but not everywhere. Some economists are forecasting that lenders are gearing up for a “spring cleaning of deferred distress” in the first half of 2015 in some local markets.
“While the national level of foreclosures may normalize in the next two years, there will always be the potential for some pockets of distress in the mortgage market,” says Molly Boesel, senior economist at CoreLogic.
Foreclosures sold for an average of 17 percent below market value in November – compared to 15 percent in October. Short sales were discounted by 13 percent, according to the latest existing-home sales report from the National Association of REALTORS®.
According to CoreLogic, the following states registered the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in November 2014:

• Florida:  118,000
• Michigan: 50,000
• Texas: 36,000
• California: 29,000
• Ohio: 29,000

These five states alone accounted for nearly half of all completed foreclosures nationally.
Meanwhile, the states with the highest foreclosure inventory (as percentage of all mortgaged homes) are:

• New Jersey: 5.3%
• New York: 4.1%
• Florida: 3.9%
• Hawaii: 2.8%
• District of Columbia: 2.4%

On the flip side, several markets are seeing foreclosures quickly vanish from their housing market. These five areas registered the lowest number of foreclosures for the 12 months ending in November 2014:

• South Dakota: 54
• District of Columbia: 62
• North Dakota: 298
• West Virginia: 534
• Wyoming: 573

The overall number of homes lost to foreclosures in the U.S is around 5.5 million since the financial crisis began in September 2008, according to CoreLogic’s latest report.
Source: “CoreLogic Foreclosure Report November 2014,” CoreLogic (Jan. 14, 2015)