The nation’s shadow inventory – or supply of delinquent and distressed homes not yet on the market – fell 10.2% from year ago levels in July, real estate data firm CoreLogic said this week.
Overall, the nation had 2.3 million homes sitting on the sidelines that were either seriously delinquent, in foreclosure and real-estate owned in July, CoreLogic said. That is down from 2.6 million properties a year earlier, suggesting the backlog of distressed assets has moved in a year, making the shadow inventory a less daunting threat to the marketplace.
“The decline in shadow inventory has recently moderated reflecting the lower outflow of distressed sales over the past year,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “While a lower outflow of distressed sales helps alleviate downward home price pressure, long foreclosure timelines in some parts of the country causes these pools of shadow inventory to remain in limbo for an extended period of time.”
When looking at the 2.3 million properties still in the shadow inventory, CoreLogic found that one million are seriously delinquent, 900,000 are in some stage of foreclosure and 345,000 are real-estate owned.
Today, the shadow inventory is valued at about $382 billion, down from $397 billion last year.
