Foreclosures continue to drop

Foreclosures fell substantially in March, as the U.S. housing industry continued its crawl back to where it was before the recession hit.

Year-over-year, the number of houses in foreclosure dropped 25.7 percent during the third month of the year while completed foreclosures declined 15.5 percent, according to CoreLogic, the Irvine-based property analytics and information company.

There were 41,000 completed foreclosures in March, down from 48,000 one year earlier. That was a drop of 65.2 percent from September 2010, when the number of foreclosures hit its peak, according to CoreLogic’s March 2015 National Foreclosure Report, which was released Tuesday.

Completed foreclosures are the most accurate barometer of the number of homes lost to foreclosure. About 5.6 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since the financial crisis started in September 2008.

The number of mortgages in serious delinquency fell 19.1 percent in March, to approximately 1.5 million mortgages. Any mortgage payment that is 90 days or more past due is considered seriously delinquent.

The Inland Empire had a foreclosure inventory of 0.9 percent in March, a 0.2 percent drop year-over-year, according to the report.

If the present trend continues, the national foreclosure inventory will drop below 1.3 percent by the middle of this year, its lowest point since the end of 2007, said Anand Nallathambi, CoreLogic’s president and chief executive officer, in a statement.