The U.S. housing market ended 2016 with lowest level of foreclosure filings in 10 years, according data released by
ATTOM Data Solutions.
The newly published Year-End 2016 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report determined there were foreclosure filings on 933,045 properties last year, down 14 percent from 2015. The report also found that 0.70 percent of all housing units had at least one foreclosure filing in 2016, the lowest annual foreclosure rate nationwide since 2006.
ATTOM also reported that there were 85,919 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings in December, down one percent from November and down 17 percent from December 2015. Last month marked the 15th consecutive month with a year-over-year decrease in foreclosure activity.
But despite the national trend, 12 states and the District of Columbia posted a year-over-year increase in overall foreclosure activity in 2016, most notably Delaware (up 45 percent), Rhode Island (up 29 percent), Massachusetts (up 21 percent), Connecticut (up 21 percent) and Hawaii (up 20 percent). And 25 percent of the top 216 metro areas also showed year-over-year foreclosure activity increases, most notably Provo-Orem, Utah (up 30 percent), Honolulu (up 29 percent), Lynchburg, Va. (up 29 percent), Springfield, Mass. (up 29 percent) and Tucson, Ariz. (up 27 percent).
“The national foreclosure rate stayed within an historically normal range for the third consecutive year in 2016, even as banks continued to clear out legacy foreclosures from the last housing bubble, particularly in the final quarter of the year,” said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions, the new parent company of RealtyTrac. “Foreclosures completed in the fourth quarter had been in the foreclosure process 803 days on average, a substantial jump from the third quarter and indicating that banks pushed through significant numbers of legacy foreclosures during the quarter. Despite that push, we still show that more than half of all active foreclosures nationwide are on loans originated between 2004 and 2008, with a much higher share of legacy foreclosures in some markets.”
