RealtyTrac, a source for comprehensive housing data, released its Year-End 2015 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 1,083,572 U.S. properties in 2015, down 3 percent from 2014 and 62 percent from the peak of 2,871,891 properties with foreclosure filings in 2010.
The nearly 1.1 million properties with foreclosure filings in 2015 was the lowest annual total since 2006, when there were 717,522 properties with foreclosure filings nationwide.
The 2015 report also shows that 0.82 percent of all U.S. housing units (one in every 122) had at least one foreclosure filing in 2015, the second consecutive year where the annual foreclosure rate has been below 1 percent of all U.S. housing units.
RealtyTrac’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.
The report also includes new data for December, when there were 103,373 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings, down 1 percent from the previous month and 9 percent from a year ago — the third consecutive month with a year-over-year decrease in foreclosure activity.
U.S. foreclosure starts in December were down 30 percent from a year ago — the sixth consecutive month with an annual decrease in foreclosure starts — while U.S. bank repossessions (REOs) in December increased 65 percent from a year ago — the 10th consecutive month with an annual increase in REOs.
“In 2015 we saw a return to normal, healthy foreclosure activity in many markets, even as banks continued to clean up some of the last vestiges of distress left over from the last housing crisis,” RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist said. “The increase in bank repossessions that we saw for the year was evidence of this cleanup phase, which largely involves completing foreclosure on highly distressed, low value properties.
“Meanwhile, local economic problems became a larger driver of foreclosure activity in 2015,” Blomquist continued. “Examples of this are Atlantic City, New Jersey, which posted the nation’s highest metro foreclosure rate for the year, along with several heavy oil-producing markets in Texas and Oklahoma where foreclosure activity increased in 2015, counter to the national trend.”
Counter to the national trend, 24 states and the District of Columbia posted an increase in foreclosure activity in 2015 compared with 2014, including Massachusetts (up 55 percent), Missouri (up 50 percent), Oklahoma (up 36 percent), New York (up 24 percent) and Texas (up 16 percent).
Among the nation’s 20 largest metro areas, six posted year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity in 2015: Boston (up 44 percent); St. Louis (up 38 percent); Dallas (up 25 percent); Detroit (up 22 percent); New York (up 9 percent); and Houston (up less than 1 percent).
Meanwhile, 569,835 U.S. properties started the foreclosure process in 2015, down 11 percent from 2014 and down 73 percent from the peak of more than 2.1 million foreclosure starts in 2009 to a 10-year low.
Bucking the national trend, foreclosure starts increased in 2015 in 16 states, including Oklahoma (up 92 percent), Massachusetts (up 67 percent), Missouri (up 28 percent), Virginia (up 23 percent), Nevada (up 14 percent) and Arkansas (up 14 percent).
A total of 449,900 U.S. properties were repossessed by lenders in 2015, up 38 percent from 2014, but 57 percent below the peak of nearly 1.1 million bank repossessions (REOs) in 2010.
“The median price of a bank-owned home in 2015 was 41 percent below the median price of all homes — the biggest bank-owned discount nationwide since 2006,” Blomquist noted. “That may be surprising to some, but demonstrates that in a healthy real estate market foreclosures are no longer mainstream, but instead are back to being a market niche of properties with problems that many buyers do not want to tackle.”
Bank repossessions (REOs) increased from a year ago in 41 states and the District of Columbia. Some of the biggest increases were in New Jersey (up 226 percent), New York (up 194 percent), Texas (up 115 percent), North Carolina (up 108 percent), and Oregon (up 96 percent).