RealtyTrac: July Foreclosure Filings Down 16%

(RTTNews) - RealtyTrac, a source for housing data, Thursday said in its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for July that foreclosure filings were reported on 109,434 U.S. properties in July, an increase of 2 percent from the previous month but a decline of 16 percent from a year ago.

The report also shows one in every 1,203 U.S. housing units with a foreclosure filing during the month.

Foreclosure filings include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, said, "July was the 46th consecutive month where U.S. foreclosure activity was down on a year-over-year basis. After nearly four years of falling foreclosures, we are starting to see evidence that foreclosure numbers are normalizing at the national level.''

The 16 percent decrease in July was exactly half the annual decrease seen a year ago in July 2013, when U.S. foreclosure activity was down 32 percent on a year-over-year basis.

Blomquist said the number of state and local markets with persistent foreclosure problems is becoming fewer and farther between, although there were some surprise spikes in foreclosure activity in July in markets that had previously been experiencing long-term downward trends in foreclosure activity.