Nationwide foreclosures closing in on pre-pandemic levels in the year after moratorium lifted.
A report released by ATTOM, a company that provides property data to the mortgage, real estate and insurance industries, lists vacant home rates in Suffolk and Nassau County dropping slightly year-over-year.
Zombie homes represented one in 1,259 residential properties in Suffolk in Q4 2022. In Suffolk there were 459,402 residential homes and of those 2,978 were vacant, which translates to 0.65% of all homes being zombie homes in the county. That’s down slightly from the same quarter last year. In 2021 there were 3,394 vacant properties in the county in Q4, representing 0.73% of all residential homes.
Of the 15,460 homes in pre-foreclosure (defined by the company as properties that have started the foreclosure process but have not yet been repossessed by the foreclosing lender), 365 of those were zombie homes in Suffolk, or 2.36% of all pre-foreclosure homes. In 2021, there were 377 vacant homes in pre-foreclosure, a ratio of 2.47% of all properties in pre-foreclosure.
The company noted the difference between homes that were simply vacant as opposed to vacant homes that were in pre-foreclosure, the process by which a bank starts to repossess the property.
Nassau County had an estimated 371,107 total residential properties in the county in Q4 2022, according to the data. Of those, 2,455 were vacant, 0.66% of all properties in Nassau. Last year in the same timeframe there were 2,699 vacant properties, 0.73% of all homes in the county.
In Nassau there were 10,372 in pre-foreclosure in Q4 2022, with 215 of those being zombie homes or 2.07% of all pre-foreclosure homes. In comparison, in Q4 2021 there were 220 zombie homes in pre-foreclosure at a rate of 2.10% of all properties in pre-foreclosure.
The company’s fourth-quarter 2022 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report also showed that almost 1.3 million residential properties in the United States sit vacant. That figure represents 1.26%, or one in 79 homes, across the nation.
Data analyzed by the company took into account only counties with more than 50,000 residential homes nationwide. According to the data, St. Louis City county in Missouri has the highest percentage of vacant properties versus total residential homes at 7.83%. The lowest rate was in Shelby County in Alabama with only .06% of all properties lying vacant.
The report analyzes publicly recorded real estate data collected by ATTOM — including foreclosure status, equity and owner-occupancy status — matched against monthly updated vacancy data.
The report also reveals that 284,423 residential properties across the entire U.S. are in the process of foreclosure in the fourth quarter of this year, up 5.2% from the third quarter of 2022 and up 27.4% from the fourth quarter of 2021.
The uptick in homes in foreclosure year-over-year, according to ATTOM, is the relaxing of Covid-19 rules barring the action during the pandemic. A growing number of homeowners have faced possible foreclosure since the nationwide moratorium on lenders pursuing delinquent homeowners, imposed after the Coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, was lifted at the end of July 2021.
“The government’s foreclosure moratorium dramatically reduced the number of properties in foreclosure,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM.
Sharga said that since the foreclosure ban has been lifted, we are likely to see a gradual return to pre-pandemic levels.
Despite the increase, the number of zombie-foreclosures remains historically low, representing just a tiny segment of the nation’s total stock of 100.1 million residential properties. Just one of every 12,963 homes in the fourth quarter of 2022 is vacant nationwide.
New York State has 44,239 vacant properties overall. Florida has the most with 136,332 and Vermont has the fewest with 825.
New York has the dubious honor of coming in first in one category. According to the company, New York has the highest overall number of zombie homes that are currently in pre-foreclosure with 1,995. Florida came in second with 1,030. The states with the least number of vacant homes in pre-foreclosure were New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming, all with just one.
The company says it analyzed county tax assessor data for about 100 million residential properties for vacancy, broken down by foreclosure status and owner-occupancy status to come up with its finding. Only metropolitan statistical areas with at least 100,000 residential properties and counties with at least 50,000 residential properties were included in the analysis.
