U.S. Foreclosure Activity Drops to 10-Year Low in 2016

U.S. foreclosure activity dropped 14 percent last year from 2015, according to Attom Data Solutions’ Year-End 2016 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.

Foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 933,045 U.S. properties in 2016, reaching the lowest level since 2006, when there were 717,522 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings.

Florida was ranked No. 4 in the nation due to having 1.18 percent of all the housing units in the state with foreclosure filings. The Sunshine State had 106, 901 total properties with foreclosure filings, down 33.09 percent from 2015, and down 77.97 percent from the peak in 2010.

In December, 85,919 U.S. properties had foreclosure filings, down 1 percent from the previous month and down 17 percent from a year ago — the 15th consecutive month with a year-over-year decrease in foreclosure activity.

“The national foreclosure rate stayed within an historically normal range for the third consecutive year in 2016, even as banks continued to clear out legacy foreclosures from the last housing bubble, particularly in the final quarter of the year,” said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at Attom Data Solutions, the new parent company of RealtyTrac, in a prepared statement. “Foreclosures completed in the fourth quarter had been in the foreclosure process 803 days on average, a substantial jump from the third quarter and indicating that banks pushed through significant numbers of legacy foreclosures during the quarter. Despite that push, we still show that more than half of all active foreclosures nationwide are on loans originated between 2004 and 2008, with a much higher share of legacy foreclosures in some markets.”

When it comes to the number of legacy foreclosures, New Jersey led the way with 32,279, followed by New York (31,838), Florida (29,411), California (17,208), and Illinois (12,244).

In addition, the states with the highest foreclosure rates in 2016 were New Jersey (1.86 percent of housing units with a foreclosure filing); Delaware (1.51 percent); Maryland (1.37 percent); Florida (1.18 percent); and Illinois (1.10 percent).

Among 216 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000, those with the highest foreclosure rate in 2016 were Atlantic City, N.J., (3.39 percent of housing units with a foreclosure filing); Trenton, N.J., (2.16 percent); Rockford, Ill., (1.54 percent); Philadelphia (1.53 percent); and Lakeland-Winter Haven, (1.46 percent).

Other metro areas with foreclosure rates ranking among the top 10 highest nationwide in 2016 were Baltimore (1.45 percent of housing units with a foreclosure filing); Tampa-St. Petersburg (1.38 percent); Chicago (1.35 percent); Columbia, S.C., (1.32 percent); and Miami (1.30 percent).

There were eight states where the average time to foreclose in the fourth quarter was more than 1,000 days: Utah (1,403); New Jersey (1,383); New York (1,283); Hawaii (1,220); Florida (1,186); Indiana (1,033); Illinois (1,024); and Pennsylvania (1,010).

Attom’s year-end foreclosure report is a count of unique properties with a foreclosure filing during the year based on publicly recorded and published foreclosure filings collected in more than 2,500 counties nationwide, with address-level data on more than 23 million foreclosure filings historically also available for license or customized reporting.

Source: Florida Realtors®, Orlando Business Journal, RealtyTrac