According to CoreLogic, foreclosures during the month of September were down 39% from last September with 84,000 foreclosures twelve months ago to 51,000 this September. The number of completed foreclosures also fell by 0.7% between August 2013 and September 2013.
Despite the improvement, the number of completed foreclosures two months ago was higher than it was between 2000 and 2006, when the average foreclosure completion rate was 21,000 per month (completed foreclosures mean houses lost to foreclosure).
Serious delinquencies, which are mortgages that are 90 days or more past due, have been improving for the past few months. Currently, there are fewer than 2.1 million seriously delinquent mortgages in the U.S.— the lowest since December 2008.
In September 2013, there were 902,000 homes were in some stage of foreclosure, down from 1.4 million homes 12 months prior, according to CoreLogic. This is the 23rd consecutive month with a year-over-year decline. Despite these improvements, two-thirds of the 900,000 properties in foreclosure are in judicial states, where the foreclosure process is sluggish. New York is a judicial state and has the third-highest foreclosure inventory with 4.8% of all mortgaged homes.