The number of default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions declined during 2017, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ year-end foreclosure market report.
The report said foreclosure filings were reported on 676,535 U.S. properties in 2017, down 27 percent from 2016 and down 76 percent from a peak of nearly 2.9 million in 2010 to the lowest level since 2005.
The properties on which foreclosure-related actions were filed represented 0.51 percent of all U.S. housing units, down from 0.70 percent in 2016 and down from a peak of 2.23 percent in 2010 to the lowest level since 2005, ATTOM said.
“Thanks to a housing boom driven primarily by a scarcity of supply, which has helped to limit home purchases to the most highly qualified — and low-risk — borrowers, the U.S. housing market has the luxury of playing a version of foreclosure limbo in which it searches for how low foreclosures can go,” ATTOM Senior Vice President Daren Blomquist said in a release.
“There are a few notable local market exceptions playing a different version of foreclosure limbo in which a backlog of legacy foreclosure activity left over from the last housing crisis is still winding its way through a labyrinthine foreclosure process, resulting in incongruous jumps in various stages of foreclosure activity in markets such as New York, New Jersey and DC,” Blomquist added.
According to the report, lenders started the foreclosure process on 383,701 U.S. properties in 2017, down 20 percent from 2016 and down 82 percent from a peak of 2,139,005 in 2009 to a new all-time low.
Despite that trend, the District of Columbia and five states posted year-over-year increases in foreclosure starts in 2017. Those places were Illinois (up 2 percent); Oklahoma (up 23 percent); Louisiana (up 2 percent); DC (up 54 percent); West Virginia (up 32 percent); and Vermont (up 27 percent).
The report identified the states with the states with the highest foreclosure rates in 2017 as New Jersey (1.61 percent); Delaware (1.13 percent); Maryland (0.95 percent); Illinois (0.86 percent); and Connecticut (0.78 percent).
The cities with the highest foreclosure rates in 2017 were Atlantic City (2.72 percent); Trenton, N.J. (1.68 percent); Philadelphia (1.26 percent); Fayetteville, N.C. (1.17 percent); and Rockford, Ill. (1.14 percent).