National foreclosures decline 20%

Completed foreclosures dropped 19.8 percent to 40,000 in April, compared to 50,000 in the same month a year earlier, according to real estate tracker CoreLogic.

As of April, the foreclosure inventory comprised 521,000 homes, or 1.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage, according to a news release.

CoreLogic reports the number of mortgages in serious delinquency - defined as 90 or more days past due - declined 22.1 percent in April to 1.4 million.

"Despite a slow and steady improvement in most housing market fundamentals, too many families remain in default of their mortgage obligations," said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic, in the release. "The percent of homeowners with a mortgage that have missed three or more monthly payments or are in foreclosure proceedings dropped to 3.6 percent in our April data; while well below the record peak of nearly 9 percent and the lowest in more than seven years, it remains about double the pre-2007 rate."

Since the financial crisis began, there have been roughly 5.7 million completed foreclosures.