Arizona’s foreclosure inventory rate was among the lowest in the nation at 0.4 percent, according to CoreLogic’s National Foreclosure Report released Tuesday.
Only Alaska had a lower rate at 0.3 percent, while Minnesota, Colorado and Utah also had a foreclosure inventory rate of 0.4 percent.
The report shows that the foreclosure inventory declined 23.2 percent nationally in March from the previous year and completed foreclosures dropped nearly 15 percent.
In Arizona, the number of foreclosures for the past 12 months ending in March was 10,872, down 9.5 percent from the previous 12-month period.
The number of mortgages with serious delinquencies was 3.1 percent nationally and 1.7 percent in Arizona. A serious delinquency is defined as 90 days or more past due, including loans in foreclosure.
“Delinquencies and foreclosure rates are now at pre-crash levels as the benefits of higher home prices, improving economic fundamentals and years of cautious underwriting are being felt across the country,” said Anand Nallathambi, CoreLogic president and CEO.
“Longer term, as loans made since 2009 account for a larger share of outstanding debt, we anticipate that the serious delinquency rate will have further substantive declines,” he added.
The March 2016 foreclosure inventory rate is the lowest for any month since October 2007 and the serious delinquency rate is the lowest since November 2007.
Arizona housing market was hit hard by foreclosures early on in the Great Recession but has since recovered.
“Nationally, the economy added 609,000 jobs during the first three months of 2016, and average weekly earnings grew 2 percent over the past year,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, CoreLogic chief economist.
“Job and earnings growth have helped bring serious delinquency rates down in nearly every state,” he said. “However, serious delinquency rates increased in North Dakota and West Virginia, two states affected by the drop in demand for the fuel each produces.
The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in March 2016 were Florida (69,000), Michigan (48,000), Texas (28,000), Georgia (23,000) and California (23,000). These five states accounted for about 41 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally.
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