Foreclosures Remain High but Improving Yearly: CoreLogic

The number of completed foreclosures decreased yearly and increase slightly month-over-month in May, reported CoreLogic Friday.

The number of completed foreclosures last month totaled 63,000 compared to 77,000 in May 2011 and 62,000 in April 2012.

“Although the level of completed foreclosures remains high, it is down 27 percent from a peak of 1.1 million in all of 2010,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.

Since September 2008, 3.6 million homes have been lost to foreclosure.

May also saw a yearly drop in the number of homes sitting in foreclosure inventory with about 1.4 million homes, or 3.4 percent, in foreclosure compared to 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent a year ago. Month-over-month, there was no change. Foreclosure inventory is the share of all homes in some stage of the foreclosure process.

“Though the national foreclosure inventory levels remain steady, around 1.4 million homes, there have been dramatic shifts at the state level,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic, who added that Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan each experienced at least a 20-percent decline in foreclosure inventory from a year ago.

However, there is a different trend for judicial states.

“While foreclosure inventories in most states are declining, the foreclosure inventory is still rising in many judicial states, such as Hawaii, New York, and Connecticut,” he said.

The top four states with the highest share of inventory in foreclosure were Florida (11.9 percent), New Jersey (6.6 percent), Illinois (5.3 percent) and New York (5.0 percent), and all four states are judicial. Judicial states require lenders to go through the courts before initiating a foreclosure whereas non-judicial foreclosure states allow lenders to start the foreclosure process without court intervention. Nevada (4.9 percent) had the fifth highest share of foreclosures and is a non-judicial state.

The two states with the lowest percentage of foreclosure inventory were Wyoming (0.7 percent)
and Alaska (0.8 percent) and both are non-judicial. The other top five states were North Dakota (0.8 percent), Nebraska (1.0 percent), and South Dakota (1.3 percent) and are judicial.

The five states with the highest yearly number of completed foreclosures on accounted for nearly half, 48.8 percent, of all completed foreclosures in the U.S.

The five states were California, which had 133,000 completed foreclosures, followed by Florida (92,000), Michigan (60,000), Texas (58,000), and Georgia (57,000).

The states with lowest yearly number of completed foreclosures were South Dakota (48), District of Columbia (74), North Dakota (547), West Virginia (620), and Hawaii (623).

CoreLogic is a provider of consumer, financial and property information, analytics and services to the public and private sectors.

Source DsNews.com by Esther Cho 06/29/12

BarCap: Citi saves the most through short sale

By Jon Prior

• June 29, 2012 • 9:10am

Citigroup ($27.35 0.96%) saves the most money when doing short sales among the largest mortgage servicers in the country, according to Barclays Capital research.

The bank conducts a short sale on 40% of its resolutions of troubled loans, the third highest percentage. Bank of America ($8.00 0.26%) and JPMorgan Chase ($36.50 0.62%) each resolve roughly half of their problem mortgages through short sale.

Because of the extended time it now takes a foreclosure to be completed and the maintenance and litigation costs involved, short sales reduce loss severities by as much as 10% from severely delinquent subprime loans, according to the report.

"The additional benefit is due to high liquidation costs and a distressed discount, as an REO property may be stripped or more poorly maintained," BarCap analysts said.

Investors complain of widespread fraud, which if prevented by the banks could raise savings even more.

Still, short sale growth boomed since the foreclosure crisis struck. Short sales on all types of loans increased to 46% of liquidiations as of the end of last year, according to BarCap, up from 29% in 2008.

Source HousingWire

Foreclosure Market Trends Report - June 2012

47a7f93f-3c5f-49bf-b77b-e350bd4bae78.pdf Download this file

May Busy with Foreclosure Activity After Slowdown: RealtyTrac

After seeing months of consistent decreases, May turned out to be a busy month for foreclosure activity.

Foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions, were up 9 percent in May from the previous month of April, but still down 4 percent from a year ago, according to RealtyTrac’s U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for May 2012.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 205,990 properties in May after two consecutive months below 200,000, but activity levels were still down on a yearly basis for 20 consecutive months now. In April, foreclosure filings totaled 188,780.

Brandon Moore, CEO of RealtyTrac, said the increase in activity shows the ride to the bottom of the foreclosure cycle will be “bumpy.”
The report also revealed that one out of every 639 homes had a foreclosure filing during the month.

After three straight monthly decreases to a 49-month low in April, bank repossessions (REOs) climbed 7 percent month-over-month, but were still down 18 percent from May 2011. In May, lenders completed the foreclosure process on 54,844 properties.

Foreclosure starts – default notices or scheduled foreclosure auctions, depending on the state – were filed on 109,051 properties in May, a 12 percent monthly increase and a 16 percent jump from a year ago. The annual increase was a first after 27 consecutive months of yearly declines.

“Based on the rise in pre-foreclosure sales we’ve seen so far this year, a higher percentage of these new foreclosure starts will likely end up as short sales or auction sales to third parties rather than bank repossessions going forward,” said Moore. “While pre-foreclosure sales have less of a negative impact on home values than bank-owned sales, they still represent a discounted sale where a distressed homeowner is losing his or her home.”

Moore added that more banks are treating delinquent mortgages with short sales rather than bank repossessions to help minimize losses and also avoid taking on more REOs, which have to then be managed, maintained and marketed for sale.

On a state-by-state basis, foreclosure starts increased over a one-year period in 33 out of 50 states – 17 of the states have a judicial process and 16 states a non-judicial process.

Judicial states with the highest increases in foreclosure starts included New Jersey (118 percent), Pennsylvania (97 percent), Florida (83 percent), Massachusetts (60 percent), New York (59 percent), South Carolina (43 percent), Ohio (32 percent) and Illinois (28 percent).
Non-judicial states that posted the highest increases in foreclosure starts were Tennessee (165 percent), Texas (51 percent), Missouri (35 percent), Georgia (30 percent), and Michigan (24 percent).

Foreclosure activity in Georgia spiked 33 percent from the previous month and 30 percent from a year ago, giving the state the highest foreclosure rate out of all states.
In the previous month, Georgia actually had a lower foreclosure rate than Arizona, Florida, California and Nevada.

Arizona foreclosure activity rose by 24 percent in May month-over-month, giving the state the number two spot for its foreclosure rate. Foreclosure activity for the state, however, was down 29 percent from a year ago.

Even though Nevada saw a 66 percent yearly drop in foreclosure activity, the state still came in third for its foreclosure rate.

California decreased its foreclosure activity by 19 percent on a yearly basis, but still managed to have the fourth highest foreclosure rate.
Illinois, on the other hand, had a 54 percent yearly increase in foreclosure activity; the state had the fifth highest foreclosure rate.

Other states with foreclosure rates in the top 10 category were Ohio, Michigan, South Carolina, and Utah.

Among the metro areas, Riverside-San Bernardino in California came in first for the highest foreclosure rate among the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas by population. One in every 179 housing units in the Riverside-San Bernardino metro had a foreclosure filing in May, which is more than 3.5 times the national average.
Atlanta came in second for its foreclosure rate, Phoenix third, Chicago fourth, and Tampa came in at fifth.

RealtyTrac is an online marketplace of foreclosure properties, with more than 1.5 million default, auction and bank-owned listings from over 2,200 U.S. counties, along with detailed property, loan and home sales data.

By : Esther Cho , Source www.dsnews.com

Zillow: Home Values Mixed, Rent Continues to Climb

Home values rose in May month-over-month, marking the third consecutive month of increases, but fell on a yearly basis, according to Zillow’s Real Estate Market Reports.

Prices moved upwards by 0.5 percent from the month before in April to $148,100, but home values continued their downward fall on a yearly basis, dropping 0.9 percent from May 2011, according to the Zillow’s Home Value Index.

The upside to the yearly decline is it’s the smallest year-over-year drop since October 2007.

“It is promising to see consecutive months of national home value increases, especially during a period in which we’d expected more downward pressure due to foreclosures,” said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries.

Humphries noted there’s a tug-of-war situation with inventory, where buyers want to buy but sellers can’t or don’t want to sell due to negative equity. This, he said, will make for a more volatile housing recovery than what was anticipated.

Notably, Zillow’s measure showed home prices spiked in the Phoenix metro, increasing by 9 percent year-over-year and by 1.9 percent month-over-month in May. In the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro, home values rose 5.2 percent year-over-year and 2.2 percent month-over-month. Denver and Pittsburgh also saw yearly increase at 2.8 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.

Chicago, on the other hand, saw its prices plummet by 6.8 percent over a year’s period, with Atlanta following behind closely at 6.3 percent.

Rent prices also hiked up month-over-month in May by 1.8 percent and year-over-year by 4.6 percent, according to the Zillow Rent Index. The increase was seen across the board with rents up over a one-month period in 77 percent of the 344 markets covered by Zillow.

Metro areas that saw the largest yearly increase in rent were Philadelphia(13.1 percent), Baltimore (10.4 percent), Pittsburgh (10 percent), Chicago (9.1 percent), and San Francisco (8.8 percent).

The number of foreclosures took a dive in May, with 6.3 out of every 10,000 homes in the being foreclosed nationwide compared to 7.2 out of every 10,000 in April.

By : Esther Cho, Source www.dsnews.com

Radar Logic: Prices Show Monthly Gain, but Improvements Won't Last

While other experts and analysts have concluded home prices are on the rise and the recovery is under way, Radar Logic released a report challenging the upbeat viewpoint.

“We believe that the oversupply of homes relative to demand will prevent sustained home price gains for some time,” the analytics firm stated.

The argument made by Radar Logic is that as buyers absorb the supply of homes for sale in certain markets and prices start to stabilize as a result, home owners who have been waiting on the sidelines to sell will do so once price start to improve. This will increase supply once again, and home prices will stop appreciating as supply exceeds demand.

According to the RPX Composite price index, which tracks prices in 25 metropolitan areas, home values decreased by 0.8 percent year-over-year in April 2012 and increased by 2.7 percent from the month before in March 2012.

From April 2010 to April 2011, home prices made an even steeper drop at 5.2 percent, which shows prices have improved year-over-year despite the yearly decline in April 2012.

The report also noted that spring price appreciation has been strong in the West over the years, especially in Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Jose, and San Francisco.

Quinn Eddins, director of research at Radar Logic and author of the report, warns other temporary factors are helping with the gains.

“Housing bulls point to recent strength in home price indices and say that housing has bottomed and a recovery is either underway or on the horizon. But much of the recent strength in housing prices is the result of investor demand and mild winter weather, and the effects of both are likely to be temporary.

The report explained that investor demand will eventually wane as returns for rent decreases. Also, warm weather this winter allowed for a head start into the buying season, so the early increase in demand will come at the expense of a slower buying season later unless new demand is created.

In addition to home prices, Eddins also takes a skeptical view of claims that low prices and low interest rates are making way for recovery.

Instead, he agrees with a recent article by Andrew Davidson and Alex Levin titled “Measuring Housing Affordability and Home Price equililbrium; Revisiting the Housing Bubble & Bust and HPI Modeling,” which expresses the view that when down payments and the availability of affordable mortgage products are taken into account, housing is not nearly as affordable as affordability indices suggest.

By : Esther Cho Source www.dsnew.com

CoreLogic Reports Shadow Inventory Fell in April 2012 to October 2008 Levels

—Decline in Shadow Inventory Parallels Drop in Non-Distressed Inventory: Both Help Prices—

 

CoreLogic^® (NYSE: CLGX), a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, reported today that the current residential shadow inventory as of April 2012 fell to 1.5 million units, representing a supply of four months. This was a 14.8 percent drop from April 2011, when shadow inventory stood at 1.8 million units, or a six-months’ supply, which is approximately the same level as the country was experiencing in October 2008. Currently, the flow of new seriously delinquent (90 days or more) loans into the shadow inventory has been approximately offset by the equal volume of distressed (short and real estate owned) sales.

CoreLogic estimates the current stock of properties in the shadow inventory, also known as pending supply, by calculating the number of distressed properties that are seriously delinquent, in foreclosure and held as real estate owned (REO) by mortgage servicers but not currently listed on multiple listing services (MLSs). Transition rates of “delinquency to foreclosure” and “foreclosure to REO” are used to identify the currently distressed non-listed properties most likely to become REO properties. Properties that are not yet delinquent but may become delinquent in the future are not included in the estimate of the current shadow inventory. Shadow inventory is typically not included in the official metrics of unsold inventory.

“Since peaking at 2.1 million units in January 2010, the shadow inventory has fallen by 28 percent. The decline in the shadow inventory is a positive development because it removes some of the downward pressure on house prices,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “This is one of the reasons why some markets that were formerly identified as deeply distressed, like Arizona, California and Nevada, are now experiencing price increases.”

Data Highlights:

• As of April 2012, shadow inventory fell to 1.5 million units, or four-month’ supply and represented just over half of the 2.8 million properties currently seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or REO.
• The four-month’ supply of shadow inventory is at its lowest level in nearly three years. It parallels the unsold months’ supply of non-distressed active listings that hit a more than five-year low in April, falling to a 6.5-months’ from a 9.1-months’ supply just a year ago.
• Of the 1.5 million properties currently in the shadow inventory (Figures 1 and 2), 720,000 units are seriously delinquent (two months’ supply), 410,000 are in some stage of foreclosure (1.1-months’ supply) and 390,000 are already in REO (1.1-months’ supply).
• The dollar volume of shadow inventory was $246 billion as of April 2012, down from $270 billion a year ago and a three-year low.
• Serious delinquencies, which are the main driver of the shadow inventory, declined the most in Arizona (-37.0 percent), California (-28.0 percent), Nevada (-27.4 percent), Michigan (-23.7 percent) and Minnesota (-18.1 percent).

Figure 1: Shadow Inventory Detail
Count in Millions, Not Seasonally Adjusted

 

Figure 2: Months’ Supply Shadow Inventory Detail 
Number of Months, Not Seasonally Adjusted

 

Figure 3: Total Inventory Detail
Count in Millions, Not Seasonally Adjusted

 

Methodology:

CoreLogic utilized its LoanPerformance Servicing and Securities databases to size the number of 90+ day delinquencies, foreclosures and REOs. Roll rates, which measure the proportion of loans that were in one stage of default that rolled to the next stage of default over a period of time, were applied to the number of loans in default by each stage of default. This calculation allowed for estimating the number of loans that were proceeding from earlier to later stages of default. CoreLogic calculated the share of loans in default that are currently listed on MLS by matching public record properties in default to MLS active listings. It applied the percentage of defaulted loans that are being listed to the estimate of outstanding loans that will proceed to further stages of default to calculate the pending supply inventory by stage of default and added that to the visible inventory that is reported for existing homes and new homes by the National Association of Realtors and the Bureau of the Census, respectively. To determine months’ supply for visible and shadow inventories, CoreLogic utilized the number of non-seasonally adjusted home sales according to CoreLogic data.

Source: CoreLogic

The data provided is for use only by the primary recipient or the primary recipient's publication or broadcast. This data may not be re-sold, republished or licensed to any other source, including publications and sources owned by the primary recipient's parent company without prior written permission from CoreLogic. Any CoreLogic data used for publication or broadcast, in whole or in part, must be sourced as coming from CoreLogic, a data and analytics company. For use with broadcast or web content, the citation must directly accompany first reference of the data. If the data is illustrated with maps, charts, graphs or other visual elements, the CoreLogic logo must be included on screen or website. For questions, analysis or interpretation of the data, contact Lori Guyton at lguyton@cvic.com or Bill Campbell at bill@campbelllewis.com. Data provided may not be modified without the prior written permission of CoreLogic. Do not use the data in any unlawful manner. This data is compiled from public records, contributory databases and proprietary analytics, and its accuracy is dependent upon these sources.

About CoreLogic

CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX) is a leading provider of consumer, financial and property information, analytics and services to business and government. The Company combines public, contributory and proprietary data to develop predictive decision analytics and provide business services that bring dynamic insight and transparency to the markets it serves. CoreLogic has built one of the largest and most comprehensive U.S. real estate, mortgage application, fraud, and loan performance databases and is a recognized leading provider of mortgage and automotive credit reporting, property tax, valuation, flood determination, and geospatial analytics and services. More than one million users rely on CoreLogic to assess risk, support underwriting, investment and marketing decisions, prevent fraud, and improve business performance in their daily operations. The Company, headquartered in Santa Ana, Calif., has approximately 5,000 employees globally. For more information, visit www.corelogic.com.

June 14, 2012, Santa Ana, Calif. –Source www.corelogic.com