While data shows that fewer homes in the U.S. are being foreclosed on, the foreclosure rate still remains above what it was prior to the collapse of the housing market. 

Decreases in Foreclosure Rate

According to CoreLogic, a company that compiles data on property information and analytics, there were 41,000 completed U.S. foreclosures in October. That number is down 14,000 from October 2013. That marks a decrease of 26.4% over the year period. That number is also down 65% from when completed foreclosures peaked in September 2010. Completed foreclosure are the indicator used to mark the rate of homes that are actually lost to foreclosure. Since the hosting crisis began in September 2008, there have been roughly 5.3 million completed foreclosures. 

Foreclosure Inventory

Foreclosure inventory is defined as how many homes across the U.S. are in some stage of the foreclosure process. As of October this year, approximately 605,000 homes were in the national foreclosure inventory. This is down from last year’s October foreclosure inventory of 875,000. That marks a 30.9% decrease. 

Foreclosure Rate Still High

While foreclosure rate is still high, the current foreclosure rate of 1.6% marks the lowest its been since May 2008.

“While there has been a large improvement in the reduction of foreclosure inventory, completed foreclosures remain high and serve as one of the obstacles to new single-family construction,” said deputy chief economist for CoreLogic, Sam Khater, . “Until the flow of completed foreclosures declines to normal levels, new-home construction will not pick up because builders have little incentive to compete with foreclosure stock.”