Foreclosures Down Nationwide, California Real Estate Already Ahead of the Curve
The Housing Market Recovery Continues
The national housing market continues to show signs of improvement but there’s plenty more progress to be made. Due to progressive foreclosure laws in our state, the California real estate market is way ahead of the curve, the foreclosure report shows. The state has made great headway in recovering from the crash with foreclosure numbers that are among the lowest in the nation.
The January 2014 CoreLogic National Foreclosure Report shows promise for continued improvement in the housing market in 2014.
The report states that 48,000 foreclosures were completed in January, a number that is down 19% from the previous 12 months and down a whopping 11.8% from December. That month-to-month drop is indeed significant and is an excellent forecast of the progress that still needs to be made. Before the housing market crash the number of monthly foreclosures was around 21,000. So even with these strong decreases we still have a ways to go before we return to an equilibrium. So January’s numbers still need to see a 50% drop before we begin to reach the stats from the pre-bubble days but the month-over-month change is a good indicator of the nation’s continued momentum toward that goal.
Judicial Foreclosure States are Slowing the Nation’s Recovery
The numbers also show that states requiring Judicial Foreclosure are seriously lagging behind the states that offer non-Judicial Foreclosure. The simple difference here is that Judicial Foreclosure requires the lender to sue the borrower in state court before proceeding with the auction of the property. This process costs the lenders more money than in Non-Judicial states and takes significantly longer. This has caused a foreclosure backlog in the Judicial Foreclosure states and is seriously hindering the recovery process in those states. The CoreLogic Foreclosure Report shows that, on average, the Judicial Foreclosure states have higher Foreclosure Inventory Rates and Serious Delinquency Rates than the Non-Judicial states mainly because they are so back logged that they are two to three years behind the Non-Judicial states.
As a Non-Judicial Foreclosure state, California is bucking the national trend with a Foreclosure Inventory Rate and Seriously Delinquent Rate that are among the lowest in the nation.
California seems poised for solid housing price growth in 2014 with one of the lowest foreclosure inventories in the nation and one of the strongest housing price indexes as well.