Foreclosure Rate Holds Steady in February

By Sari R. Updated on 9/25/2013

The completed foreclosures number nationwide remained almost the same in February, dropping to 65K from 66K in 2011 but dropped from 71,000 in January.  This number was the for all 50 states combined. The 12-month number ending in February was 862K.  The total number of foreclosures since the real estate melt down began is about 3.4 million.

There are some factors that might cause the housing inventory to decrease, one being the spring buying which has just started.  Almost 1.4 million homes, which amounts to 3.4% of all homes with mortgages, were included in the foreclosure inventory as of February.  This number was 1.5 million at the same time in 2011 and 1.4 million in January.

The foreclosure inventory (homes that were in some state of the foreclosure process) made up 24% of the overall U.S. home sales in the Q4. This number was up from 20% of sales in Q3 and down 26% from 2011.

As far as the states most impacted, the usual suspects were again: California, Florida, Michigan, Arizona and Texas which made up 49.4% of all completed foreclosures nationwide.  The other two states that have big foreclosure problems are Georgia and Nevada which completed 58,000 and 37,000 foreclosures, respectively. The percentage of homeowners who are 90 days or more late on their mortgages dropped to 7.3% in February from 7.8% in 2011, but inched up from 7.2% in January.

The government has recently put into effect the HARP 2 Refi Program which will help homeowners who are underwater but not late on their mortgages to refinance their mortgages to better rates so they can lower their monthly payments.