Overall rate continues to decline
Foreclosure by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
The number of new foreclosures is on the upswing again in Florida, despite national foreclosure activity dropping to a 13-year low. Hurricane Irma damages and related economic disruption is partly responsible. For the country as a whole, foreclosure filings – which include new notices, auctions, and bank repossessions – were down 8% in 2017 and down 78% from a peak of nearly 2.9 million in 2010 during the depths of the Great Recession.
Despite the positive overall news, 18 states, including Florida, saw an increase in those new first notices sent to delinquent mortgagees, according to the ATTOM Data Solutions Year-End 2018 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. Florida’s new foreclosures rose 13% in 2018, ranking third in the nation behind Minnesota (29%), Texas and Michigan (both 15%), followed by Louisiana (5%) and Delaware (2%).
“Plummeting foreclosure completions combined with consistently falling foreclosure timelines in 2018 provide evidence that most of the distress from the last housing crisis has now been cleaned up,” says Todd Teta, chief product officer at ATTOM. “But there was also some evidence of distress gradually returning to the housing market in 2018, with foreclosure starts increasing from the previous year in more than one-third of all state and local housing markets.”
It’s not uncommon for states hit by natural disasters to see an increase in new foreclosures, as homeowners struggle to pay the mortgage in a home that may no longer be inhabitable, together with new storm-related bills.
While completed foreclosures (REOs) are declining, California and Florida combined have totaled nearly 1.5 million over the last 10 years. States that lead the nation in REOs include Michigan, Texas, Georgia and Illinois.
