Banks continue to clean out the pipeline of loans that were originated during the housing boom days that have since turned sour.
Most of the homes that are still being foreclosed on are from loans originated between 2004 and 2008, known as “legacy foreclosures,” according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ 2016 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.
The following markets are seeing the biggest cases of backlogs with legacy foreclosures:
- District of Columbia: 76% (share of legacy foreclosures)
- Hawaii: 66%
- New Jersey: 64%
- Nevada: 63%
- Delaware: 61%
- Massachusetts: 61%
On a county level, the highest number of legacy foreclosures are occurring in:
- Nassau County (Long Island), N.Y.: 8,632 representing 74 percent of all loans actively in foreclosure
- Cook County (Chicago), Ill.: 7,357 representing 53 percent
- Kings County (Brooklyn), N.Y.: 6,207 representing 68 percent
- Miami-Dade County, Fla.: 5,262 representing 64 percent
- Los Angeles County, Calif.: 4,956 representing 64 percent
While foreclosures are elevated in some areas, nationwide they mostly are continuing to drop. ATTOM Data Solution’s report showed that overall foreclosure filings – which include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions – dropped 14 percent in 2016 from 2015 to the lowest level since 2006. There were 933,045 foreclosure filings in 2016.
“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,” says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. “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.”
Source: RealtyTrac
