Last Thursday, CoreLogic reported that April foreclosure inventory was down nationally by 35% from one year ago to approximately 694,000 homes (1.8% of all homes with a mortgage) from 1.1 million homes (2.7% of all homes with a mortgage).  This represented the 30th consecutive month of declines in the inventory of foreclosed homes with the past 16 months showing declines of 20% or more.  Pre-foreclosure filings also decreased by 28.6% in April from one year ago, declining from 100,000 to 71,000.  This represented a 69% drop from the peak of 229,000 in March of 2009.  CoreLogic noted that this was still substantially higher than the average monthly figure of 13,000 from the 2000 to 2005 period.

Arizona posted the largest year-over-year decline (-55.6%) followed by Utah (-53%), Minnesota (-51.3%), Georgia (-50.1%) and Nevada (-49.0%).  Declines in foreclosure inventory occurred in all 50 states and in Washington D.C. and 45 states had decreases of more than 25%.  A link to the CoreLogic report is found here: Foreclosure Inventory Down 35% Nationally From a Year Ago

One week earlier, CoreLogic reported a general decline in institutional investor activity in the markets they have been following with notable exceptions such as Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis and Miami.  The share of sales attributed to institutional investor in Miami jumped from 6.8% in March of 2013 to 17.2% in March of this year, a spike attributed to the acquisition of entire condominium developments by investors.  On the other hand, institutional investor activity in Phoenix fell to 3.6% in March from a high of 13.2% in July 2012 due to rising home prices and declining inventory, a scenario found in many California and Florida markets (Miami notwithstanding).

One day before that report, CoreLogic released another which showed declines in sales from April 2013 to April 2014, particularly with distressed sales which declined by 50%.  Overall, sales declined by 2%.  Short sales fell by 88% to just 0.9% of all transfers with REO sales falling by 25% to 8.9% of all sales.  The largest share of distressed transactions were found in Michigan (28.5%) followed by Illinois (24.8%), Florida (23.2%), Nevada (23.0%) and Georgia (21.3%)  and constituted just 1% of all transfers.

Last week, the FHFA reported that home prices rose by 1.3% nationally in the first quarter despite weak overall activity with the Pacific Division showing the greatest increase (2.1%) and the Middle Atlantic Division the least (0.1%).  A link to the entire report which includes detailed breakdowns is found here: Federal Housing Finance Agency News Release (Opens a PDF File)

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