There were 164,581 foreclosure filings in the first six months of 2022, according to ATTOM’s midyear 2022 U.S. foreclosure market report. That’s up 153 percent year-over-year, but down 1 percent from the same period two years ago.
“Foreclosure activity across the United States continued its slow, steady climb back to pre-pandemic levels in the first half of 2022,” ATTOM Executive Vice President of Market Intelligence Rick Sharga said in a release. “While overall foreclosure activity is still running significantly below historic averages, the dramatic increase in foreclosure starts suggests that we may be back to normal levels by sometime in early 2023.”
Only seven of the 223 metro areas analyzed by ATTOM saw foreclosure activity decrease in the first half of 2022. Those metros included Lake Havasu, Ariz. (down 47 percent); Eugene, Ore. (down 27 percent); Springfield, Ill. (down 19 percent); Shreveport, La. (down 9 percent); and Brownsville, Texas (down 8 percent).
Nationwide 0.12 percent of all housing units (one in every 854) had a foreclosure filing in the first half of 2022. States with the highest foreclosure rates were Illinois (0.26 percent of housing units with a foreclosure filing), New Jersey (0.24 percent), Ohio (0.21 percent), Delaware (0.20 percent), South Carolina (0.19 percent), Florida (0.18 percent), Nevada (0.18 percent), Indiana (0.16 percent), Georgia (0.13 percent) and Michigan (0.13 percent).
The metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates in the first half of the year were Cleveland (0.40 percent), Atlantic City, N.J. (0.33 percent), Jacksonville, N.C. (0.31 percent), Chicago (0.30 percent), Columbia, S.C. (0.30 percent), Rockford, Ill. (0.30 percent), Lakeland, Fla. (0.27 percent), Akron, Ohio (0.24 percent), Fayetteville, N.C. (0.24 percent) and Trenton, N.J. (0.23 percent).
The states that saw the greatest number of foreclosures starts were California (12,805 foreclosure starts), Florida (11,448), Tennessee (10,970), Illinois (8,411) and Ohio (6,987).
“It’s important to note that many of the foreclosure starts we’re seeing today – in fact, much of the overall foreclosure activity we’re seeing right now – is on loans that were either already in foreclosure or were more than 120 days delinquent prior to the pandemic,” Sharga said. “Many of these loans were protected by the government’s foreclosure moratorium, or they would have already been foreclosed on two years ago. There’s very little delinquency or default activity that’s truly new in the numbers we’re tracking.”
Lenders foreclosed (REO) on 20,750 properties in the first six months of 2022, up 30 percent from the last half of 2021 and up 113 percent from the first half of 2020. The states that posted the greatest number of REOs were Illinois (2,434 REOs), Michigan (2,259), Pennsylvania (1,290), California (1,043) and Florida (1,041 REOs).