Total foreclosure filings, including default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions, declined during the first six months of 2017, according to ATTOM Data Solutions.
ATTOM’s Midyear 2017 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report found 428,400 U.S. properties with foreclosure-related filings during the first six months of 2017, a 20 percent reduction from the same time period a year ago.
“With a few local market exceptions, foreclosures have become the unicorns of the housing market: hard to find but highly sought after,” ATTOM Data Solutions Senior Vice President Daren Blomquist said in a release. “More than 38 percent of properties sold at foreclosure auction in the first half of this year went to third-party buyers rather than back to the bank — the highest share we’ve ever seen going back as far as 2000.”
“Although foreclosures are fading overall, there has been a notable uptick in foreclosures completed by some nonbank entities — counter to the sharp downward foreclosure trend among big banks and government-backed loans,” Blomquist added.
Despite the nationwide trend of declining foreclosure-related filings, eight states and the District of Columbia posted year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity in the first half of 2017.
Foreclosure activity increased in the District of Columbia (60 percent); in New Jersey (2 percent); in Connecticut (3 percent); in Louisiana (5 percent); and in Mississippi (11 percent) during the first six months of 2017.
States with the highest foreclosure rates in the first half of 2017 were New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois and Connecticut.
Metropolitan areas that had increases in foreclosure-related activities during the first six months of 2017 included Houston (18 percent); Oklahoma City (22 percent); Hartford, Conn. (12 percent); New Orleans (4 percent); and Albany, N.Y. (2 percent).
Metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates in the first half of 2017 were Atlantic City, Trenton, N.J., Philadelphia, Rockford, Ill. and Baltimore.