The State With the Most Foreclosures

Foreclosures plagued the real estate market during the Great Recession. Home prices plunged so much in some areas that people lost all their home equity and even faced situations in which the value of their mortgages was higher than the value of their homes. Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas were hit particularly hard.

What a difference a decade makes. Home prices have soared in the past year. The carefully followed S&P Case Shiller home price index showed home prices rose nearly 20% year over year nationwide recently. In some markets, the figure was closer to 30%. Other research shows that, in some cities, the rise has been even more substantial.

Price increases have been helped by historically low mortgage rates. Another reason prices have risen in some markets is that people are relocating from large and expensive coastal cities like San Francisco to more affordable cities inland. This flood of buyers has caused home prices to rise in many of these markets. People have been able to relocate largely because of the opportunity to work from home offered to millions of Americans because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, not all markets are created equal when it comes to how well people have done with their home values and their ability to pay mortgages. Real estate data company ATTOM recently released its third-quarter 2021 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. It showed that nationwide there were 45,517 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings. That is up 685 from the same period a year ago.

Commenting on the data, Rick Sharga, executive vice president at RealtyTrac, an ATTOM company said:

September foreclosure actions were almost 70 percent lower than they were prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in September of 2019, and Q3 foreclosure activity was 60 percent lower than the same quarter that year.

One way that the research is analyzed is by how many foreclosures there are per number of homes. Nationwide, one in every 3,019 properties had a foreclosure filing in the third quarter of 2021.

The hardest-hit state in the quarter was Nevada, at one in 1,463. It was followed by Illinois at one in every 1,465.

Click here to read about the most at-risk housing markets.

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