Foreclosure inventory in Minnesota was among the lowest in the nation, bolstering the notion that foreclosure prevention efforts and a strong economy have been a boon to the state's homeowners, according to CoreLogic's National Foreclosure Report.
The states with the lowest foreclosure inventory rate, which represents the number of homes at some stage in the foreclosure process, during February were Alaska (0.3 percent), Minnesota (0.4 percent), Arizona (0.4 percent), Colorado (0.4 percent) and Utah (0.4 percent).
Nationwide, the national foreclosure inventory included approximately 434,000, or 1.1 percent, compared with 571,000 homes, or 1.5 percent, in February 2015.
Completed foreclosures or the total number of homes lost to foreclosure, declined 10 percent compared with February 2015 to just 38,000 properties. Compared with a peak of 117,776 in September 2010, completed foreclosures fell 71.3 percent.
CoreLogic said that since the start of the financial crisis in September 2008, there have been about 6.2 million completed foreclosures across the country. Since homeownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been approximately 8.2 million homes lost to foreclosure.
Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic attributed the trend to income growth and improved. "Job creation averaged 207,000 during the first two months of 2016, and incomes grew over the past year," he said in a statement.
The states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in February 2016 were Florida (72,000), Michigan (49,000), Texas (29,000), California (25,000) and Ohio (23,000), all o which accounted for almost half of all completed foreclosures nationally.
