U.S. foreclosures continue to fall

Nationwide foreclosures declined by 27.3 percent in February, down 15.7 percent year-over-year, according to data released Tuesday.

There were an estimated 39,000 home foreclosures during the second month of the year, a decrease of 67 percent from the peak of completed foreclosures in September 2010, according to CoreLogic in Irvine, which provides property information and other data to public and private clients worldwide.

One CoreLogic official called the February foreclosure data encouraging, but cautioned that the housing market is still from its peak.

“The number of homes in foreclosure proceedings fell by 27 percent from a year ago and stands at about one-third of what it was at trough of the housing cycle,” said Frank Nothaft, CoreLogic’s chief economist, in a statement. “While the drop in the share of mortgages in foreclosure to 1.4 percent is a welcome sign of continued recovery in the housing market, that share remains more than double the 0.6 percent average foreclosure rate that we saw during 2000-2004.”

In the Inland Empire, 0.9 percent the region’s housing stock was in foreclosure in February, a drop of 0.2 percent year-over-year, according to the data.

Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 5.6 million completed housing foreclosures throughout the United States.