ATTOM’s Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report covering the second quarter of 2023 has determined there are approximately 1.3 million vacant U.S. residential properties – which represents 1.3% or one in 79 homes across the country.
The report found 311,508 residential properties were in the process of foreclosure in the second quarter of this year, up 4.3% from the previous quarter and up 20.2% from one year earlier. percent from the second quarter of 2022. ATTOM noted that more homeowners are facing possible foreclosure since the pandemic-era moratorium on lenders pursuing delinquent homeowners was lifted in the middle of 2021.
Among those pre-foreclosure properties, 8,752 sit vacant as zombie foreclosures (pre-foreclosure properties abandoned by owners), up by 7.5% from 8,141 in the prior quarter and up 15.6% from 7,569 one year earlier. The number of zombie properties has grown in each of the last five quarters, dating back to early in 2022.
While most neighborhoods around the U.S. have little or no zombie foreclosures, the biggest increases from the first quarter of 2023 to the second quarter in states with at least 50 zombie properties are in Texas (up 47%, from 114 to 168), Ohio (up 26%, from 846 to 1,070), Oklahoma (up 22%, from 142 to 173), Georgia (up 22%, from 78 to 95) and Iowa (up 21%, from 227 to 274).
Nonetheless, ATTOM stressed the number of zombie foreclosures remains historically low and barely impacts the total of 101.3 million U.S. residential properties.
“Zombie foreclosures keep inching up as lenders pursue more delinquent homeowners in courts around the country. All indications are that the number of zombie properties will keep going up slowly, given that foreclosures are up,” said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM. “But abandoned properties are still nothing more than a dot on the radar screen among the majority of neighborhoods. We are still a long way from the fallout after the Great Recession of the late 2000s, when this was a very real issue in many areas around the U.S.”
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