With the housing market still undergoing its share of changes and downshifts, a new report released by ATTOM Data Solutions indicates that the uptick of U.S. foreclosures experienced a mild deceleration last month.
In its July 2022 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, the organization indicated that there were 21,428 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings—default notices, scheduled auctions, or bank repossessions—in July, marking a 4% decline from the previous month.
Despite seeing a mild dip in the monthly activity, the foreclosures continued to surge compared to last year, when federal moratoriums were still in place. ATTOM’s report showed that foreclosures were up 226% YoY last month.
According to experts, the decline in July reflects a return to season behavior in the third quarter of the year, typically seeing a lull in foreclosure and completions.
Key highlights:
- Delaware, Illinois and New Jersey had the highest foreclosure rates.
- Nationwide one in every 4,628 housing units had a foreclosure filing in July 2022
- Foreclosure starts increased monthly in 21 states nationwide.
- Foreclosure completion numbers decrease 5% from last month.
- Lenders repossessed 3,068 U.S. properties through completed foreclosures (REOs) in July 2022.
The major takeaway:
“While it’s encouraging to see both foreclosure starts and completions drop off a bit in July, it’s also worth noting that there may be some seasonality impacting the numbers,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM. “In eight of the last ten years, Q3 foreclosure activity has been lower than the previous quarter, so we might just be seeing a return to a more normal seasonal pattern of delinquencies and defaults.”
“It appears that a few states are still catching up on processing foreclosures on loans that were seriously delinquent prior to the pandemic, which accounts for the year-over-year spike in foreclosure starts,” Sharga added. “But early-stage delinquencies continue to be lower than normal, so once these older loans have re-entered the foreclosure process, it will be interesting to see if foreclosure starts fall off significantly.”
Jordan Grice is RISMedia’s senior editor. Email him your real estate news to jgrice@rismedia.com.
