ATTOM: Vacancy, Zombie Foreclosure Rates Down

(Image courtesy of Curtis Adams/pexels.com)

ATTOM, Irvine, Calif., released its Q4 2025 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, finding that 1.32% of residential properties in the U.S. were vacant. That amounts to about 1.4 million homes.

That’s down slightly from 1.33% in Q3.

There are 228,943 residential properties in the process of foreclosure, and about 3.25%, or 7,448, are deemed “zombie” properties. That’s down from 3.38% in the previous quarter.

ATTOM defines a zombie property as one that has been abandoned by its owner prior to the conclusion of the foreclosure proceedings.

“These continuously low vacancy rates that the nation has held steady at around 1.4% for nearly four years, show that record high prices haven’t dampened the demand for homes,” said Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM. “It’s a good sign for local housing markets that even as we’ve seen foreclosure filings increase, the rate of homes in foreclosure that are abandoned is going down.”

The states with the highest overall vacancy rates in Q4 were Oklahoma (2.4%), Kansas (2.3%), Alabama (2.2%), Missouri (2.1%) and West Virginia (2.1%).

The lowest overall vacancy rates were in New Hampshire (0.3%), Vermont (0.4%), New Jersey (0.5%), Idaho (0.5%) and Connecticut (0.5%).

Homes owned by institutional investors were slightly more likely than typical homes to be vacant in Q4, with 3.5% unoccupied compared to the overall national rate of 3.3%.