The number of completed foreclosures in January rose to 69,000 from 65,000 in December according to the National Foreclosure Report released today by CoreLogic.  In January 2011 there were 80,000 completed foreclosures and 860,128 during the 12 months that ended in January.

Anand Nallathambi, chief executive officer of CoreLogic, a provider of information, analytics, and business services said "We are encouraged by the noticeable progress we are seeing over the last several months in the mortgage industry.  During the last several years the industry has faced enormous challenges working through difficult and complex issues. We are hopeful that these recent improvements are early signals of revitalization in the mortgage market."

While foreclosures may have increased, there was a drop in the foreclosure inventory, those loans which are in the process of foreclosure.  Approximately 1.4 million homes or 3.3 percent of all homes with a mortgage were in the inventory in January compared to 1.5 million or 3.6 percent one year earlier, a decrease of 145,000 homes or 9.5 percent, and 1.4 million or 3.4 percent in December. 

Serious delinquencies - i.e. the percentage of homeowners who were more than 90 days late on their mortgage payment, was unchanged from December at 7.2 percent but down from 7.8 percent in January 2011

The inventory of foreclosed properties held by lenders (REO) grew faster in January than the pace of REO sales, lowering the distressed clearing ratio from 0.80 in December to 0.69 in January.  The distressed clearing ratio is calculated by dividing the number of REO sales by the number of completed foreclosures; the higher the ratio, the faster the pace of REO sales relative to the pace of completed foreclosures.

"The pace of completed foreclosures is gradually increasing again, but the clearing ratio is falling as REO sales have slowed in the winter months. Judicial foreclosure states¹ are continuing to process foreclosures more slowly than non-judicial foreclosure states," said Mark Fleming, chief economist with CoreLogic. "Non-judicial foreclosure states completed almost twice as many foreclosures per 1000 active loans as judicial foreclosure states in January."

The largest number of completed foreclosures during the 12 months ending in January 2012 was in California (155,000) followed by Florida (86,000), Arizona (65,000), Michigan (65,000) and Texas (57,000). These five states account for 49.7 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally.  The highest foreclosure rates were in Florida (11.8 percent), New Jersey (6.4 percent), Illinois (5.3 percent), Nevada (5.0 percent) and New York (4.7 percent).