Delaware ended up with the nation’s highest foreclosure rate in 2016.
The ranking came from ATTOM Data Solutions, formerly RealtyTrac.
released its Year-End 2016 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.
Foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 933,045 U.S. properties in 2016, down 14 percent from 2015 to the lowest level since 2006, when there were 717,522 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings.
The report also shows that 0.70 percent of all U.S. housing units had at least one foreclosure filing in 2016, the lowest annual foreclosure rate nationwide since 2006, when 0.58 percent of housing units had at least one foreclosure filing. An earlier story also gave the state the top ranking.
Delaware’s foreclosure rate tops in nation
“The national foreclosure rate stayed within a 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.”
Nationwide, 55 percent of all loans actively in foreclosure as of the end of 2016 were originated between 2004 and 2008. The District of Columbia had the highest share of legacy foreclosures with 76 percent, followed by Hawaii (66 percent), New Jersey (64 percent), Nevada (63 percent), Delaware (61 percent), and Massachusetts (61 percent).
States with the highest foreclosure rates in 2016 were New Jersey (1.86 percent of housing units with a foreclosure filing); Delaware (1.51 percent); Maryland (1.37 percent); Florida (1.18 percent); and Illinois (1.10 percent).
Other states posting foreclosure rates in the top 10 highest in 2016 were Nevada (1.09 percent); South Carolina (0.92 percent); Connecticut (0.91 percent); Ohio (0.89 percent); and New Mexico (0.78 percent).
Atlantic City, Trenton, Rockford post top metro foreclosure rates in 2016.
U.S. properties foreclosed in the fourth quarter of 2016 had been in the foreclosure process an average of 803 days, a 29 percent jump from the previous quarter and a 27 percent increase from a year ago to the longest since ATTOM began tracking average foreclosure timelines in 2007.
