Distressed sales are down, nationally and locally

Sales of distressed houses are down nationwide, another sign that the housing market is improving.

Distressed sales accounted for 12.1 percent of all home sales nationwide in March, down 3.2 percent year-over-year and nearly two percent compared with the previous month, according to data released Monday by CoreLogic in Irvine.

A distressed sale is either the sale of a lender-owned property – usually a bank – that has been foreclosed. It can also be a “short sale,” in which a house is sold for less than what is owed on the property.

The latter is done to avoid foreclosure.

Distressed sales generally fall in March because of seasonal factors. This was the lowest month-over-month drop in distressed sales in March since 2007, well before the recession hit.

Broken down, real estate-owned sales accounted for 8.4 percent of all home sales during the third month of this year, while short sales made up 3.7 percent, CoreLogic stated in its monthly assessment of the national distressed home market.

California’s distressed sale percentage was 9.9 percent in March. That’s a drop of 57.6 percent since January 2009, when the state’s distressed rate reached its peak of 67.5 percent, according to CoreLogic.

That improvement trickled down to the Inland Empire, where 12.9 percent of the houses sold in March were distressed properties. At its peak, in February 2009, distressed properties made up 76.3 percent of all home sales in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, CoreLogic stated.

CoreLogic provides housing and other real estate data to clients worldwide in the public and private sectors.