It’s funny to look at the chart below from this report($) by Standard & Poors on the housing market’s “shadow inventory” and then think back to the recently released 2006 transcripts from Federal Reserve policy meetings where they were more interested in praising former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan and having a good laugh as the curves began to steepen.

Of course, the more important story is what’s been happening lately and, though there has been some overall improvement, conditions are not much better than they were at the height of the housing and credit market crisis a few years ago, the growth of the “Recently cured expected to redefault” category not being a particularly encouraging sign.

Corelogic and RealtyTrac are really raining on the parade that is the U.S. economic recovery (and Secret Commerce Department Report Shows the Economy May be Faltering at the CEPR isn’t helping either) as both real estate data firms provided a sobering new look at the U.S. housing market that many analysts think is poised to rebound this year.

RealtyTrac released its final report on foreclosure activity in 2011 noting that distressed sales accounted for 24 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter, up from 20 percent in the third quarter, and that the average price of a foreclosure-related sale was 29 percent below non-foreclosure sales. Corelogic reported the latest data on negative equity below, a situation that is not likely to get any better with ongoing home price declines.

With nearly a third of all borrowers either in or near negative equity, we’ll be hearing a lot more on this subject during this election year as the banks’ foreclosure mills crank up again along with talk of (and a little action on) principal writedowns.

Standard & Poor’s reported that home prices continued to decline in late-2011, the national composite index down 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, 4.0 percent lower for the year, while both the 10-City and 20-City monthly indexes declined 1.1 percent in December and saw annual returns of -3.9 percent and -4.0 percent, respectively.

Property values fell in 18 of the 20 regions in the index as Phoenix and Miami – two areas hit particularly hard during the bursting of the housing bubble – posted modest advances. Detroit led all declining regions with a drop of 3.8 percent in December, followed by Chicago and Atlanta where prices were down 2.0 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the 10-city and 20-city indexes fell only 0.5 percent to close out 2011, their sixth straight monthly decline, and both indexes indicated that home prices were down four percent for the year.

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The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes rose 4.3 percent last month, from a downwardly revised annual rate of 4.38 million in December to 4.57 million in January, and the inventory of unsold homes was down, along with home prices.

The months of supply metric fell from 6.4 months to 6.1 months, the lowest level since the economic recovery began, as overall inventory dropped 0.4 percent to 2.31 million units.

As expected, prices continued their descent during the winter months where the share of purchases by bargain hunting investors grows, the median home price falling 4.6 percent for the month, 2.0 percent lower on a year-over-year basis.

Foreclosures and short sales accounted for 35 percent of all January sales, up from 32 percent the month before, and the share of sales to investors rose from 21 percent in December to 23 percent with all-cash sales unchanged at a 31 percent share.

From a RealtyTrac presentation on foreclosures last week comes the chart below showing the dramatic increase in the amount of time it takes for lenders to take back a property that goes into default. After the recent robo-signing settlement, you’d think these numbers will start coming down this year, but, then again, no one earns big bonuses at the big banks for helping management realize losses faster.

There are some other interesting charts in there as well, including pie charts on underwater mortgages, delinquent loans, and properties that have made it all the way through the foreclosure process, along with bank loss data for California properties where, to me, $41K sounded a little low given that average loan amounts were north of $400K.