ATTOM: Foreclosure Activity Jumps 219% in 1st Half of Year
ATTOM, Irvine, Calif., said foreclosure starts jumped by 219 percent in the first six months of 2022, close to pre-COVID levels.
The company’s Midyear U.S. Foreclosure Market Report showed 164,581 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings in the first six months of 2022, up 153 percent from the same time period a year ago but down just one percent from the same time period two years ago.
“Foreclosure activity across the United States continued its slow, steady climb back to pre-pandemic levels in the first half of 2022,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM. “While overall foreclosure activity is still running significantly below historic averages, the dramatic increase in foreclosure starts suggests that we may be back to normal levels by sometime in early 2023.”
The report said nationwide, 0.12 percent of all housing units (one in every 854) had a foreclosure filing in the first half of 2022. States with the highest foreclosure rates in the were Illinois (0.26 percent of housing units); New Jersey (0.24 percent); Ohio (0.21 percent); Delaware (0.20 percent); and South Carolina (0.19 percent).
Among 223 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000, those with the highest foreclosure rates in the first half of 2022 were Cleveland, Ohio (0.40 percent of housing units); Atlantic City, N.J. (0.33 percent); Jacksonville, N.C. (0.31 percent); Chicago (0.30 percent); and Columbia, S.C. (0.30 percent).
Other report data:
–ATTOM reported 117,383 U.S. properties started the foreclosure process in the first six months of 2022, up 219 percent from the first half of last year and up 19 percent from the first half of 2020.
“Many of the foreclosure starts we’re seeing today – in fact, much of the overall foreclosure activity we’re seeing right now – is on loans that were either already in foreclosure or were more than 120 days delinquent prior to the pandemic,” Sharga said. “Many of these loans were protected by the government’s foreclosure moratorium, or they would have already been foreclosed on two years ago. There’s very little delinquency or default activity that’s truly new in the numbers we’re tracking.”
–Lenders foreclosed (REO) on a total of 20,750 U.S. properties in the first six months of 2022, up 30 percent from the last half of 2021 and up 113 percent from the first half of 2020.
–ATTOM reported 90,139 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings in the second quarter, up 15 percent from the previous quarter and up 165 percent from a year ago. National foreclosure activity total in the second quarter was 68 percent below the pre-recession average of 278,912 per quarter from Q1 2006 to Q3 2007, making Q2 2022 the 23rd consecutive quarter with foreclosure activity below the pre-recession average.
–Properties foreclosed in the second quarter took an average of 948 days from the first public foreclosure notice to complete the foreclosure process, up from 917 days in the previous quarter and up from 922 days in the second quarter of 2021.
–Nationwide in June, one in every 4,431 properties had a foreclosure filing.
–States with the highest foreclosure rates in June 2022 were Illinois (one in every 2,096 housing units); Delaware (one in every 2,117 housing units); Ohio (one in every 2,386 housing units); Nevada (one in every 2,408 housing units); and South Carolina (one in every 2,471 housing units).
–22,239 U.S. properties started the foreclosure process in June, up 1 percent from the previous month and up 226 percent from a year ago.
–Lenders completed the foreclosure process on 3,239 U.S. properties in June, up 13 percent from the previous month and up 40 percent from a year ago.
