Home Foreclosures Fall to Pre-Bubble Level

Foreclosure activity in June dropped to its lowest level nationwide since before the housing bubble started to burst nearly eight years ago, a new report said Thursday.

The number of homes facing bank auctions, default notices and scheduled auctions totaled 107,194 last month, down 16 percent from June 2013, according to RealtyTrac, a housing-industry research firm based in Irvine, Calif. June’s total was the lowest since July 2006, the company said.

“Nationwide foreclosure activity in June reached an important milestone,” Daren Blomquist, a RealtyTrac vice president, said in a prepared statement. “Over the next six to nine months, foreclosure numbers should start to flatline at consistently historically normal levels.”

Through the first half of 2014, there were 613,874 properties nationwide with foreclosure filings, down 23 percent from the first six months of 2013.

Florida, Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey and Nevada had the highest foreclosure rates through the first half of 2014.

Despite some troubled regions of the country, Blomquist said, “foreclosures are no longer a widespread contagion threatening to derail the housing market’s return to full health.”

This article appeared in print in the July 18th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.