Foreclosure Inventory Expected to Drop Below Half-Million by 2015
The financial crisis was marked by a surplus of foreclosure properties. This serves to drag down home prices and mortgage rates as lenders and sellers desperately compete with a flooded marketplace. However, the past year has shown a distinct improvement: the last twelve months has given us the lowest level of foreclosures since November of 2007.
As of last August, there were 629,000 foreclosure properties on the market, representing a drop of 2.6 percent from July and 32.8 percent from August of last year. This makes August the 34th consecutive month that the number of homes in some state of foreclosure has dropped. If this trend continues, it is entirely possible that the national inventory of foreclosure properties could fall below 500,000 before the end of the year.
Twenty-seven states enjoyed a foreclosure rate of one percent or less as of August. Unfortunately, the market here in Washington has not yet reached this point. With a foreclosure rate of 1.5 percent, Washington sit roughly in the mid range for the nation. We therefore look forward to greater improvement going into 2015.
