The American City With the Most Foreclosures

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 1, 9:12AM EDT · Published May 30, 1:01PM EDT

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The American City With the Most Foreclosures — © Spencer Platt / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The real estate prices in the United States have hockey-sticked in the last year. People have left large cities, particularly on the east and west coasts as the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed them to work from home. Many have found less expensive communities with better quality of life. Prices in some central parts of New York City and San Francisco have dropped. However, almost everywhere else, real estate prices have moved up by double digits.

Among the other reasons for higher home prices are historically low mortgage rates and strong income growth among the middle and upper classes. Builders have tried to keep up with inventory. That has not worked in a number of markets.

Foreclosure rates have remained very low, after a drop that begun to occur at the end of the housing bubble which was part of the Great Recession. Foreclosure rates in 2007 and 2008 had hit very high levels and only began to taper off more than a year later.

Foreclosures have not disappeared completely and actually began to tick higher in the second quarter according to real estate research firm ATTOM Data Solutions. In its Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, it said “The report reveals that 223,671 properties are in the process of foreclosure in the second quarter of this year, up 27.5 percent from the first quarter of 2021 but still down 13.3 percent from the second quarter of 2020.”

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ATTOM looks at data by state and by city. Among cities, it breaks out the largest markets in the country. Properties facing foreclosures vacated by their owners hit 8,078 in the second quarter. They increased in 33 states and the District of Columbia. Across the 159 metro areas with populations of over 100,000, Peoria had the highest foreclosure rate “zombie rate” at 14.2%.

Will the upward trend continue? Todd Teta, chief product officer with ATTOM Data Solutions said, “The latest numbers show a spike in zombie properties during the second quarter that stands out compared to recent times, especially given the moratorium. It may simply be due to lenders foreclosing on homes that were already abandoned. We are watching that closely to see what it means and whether it’s the start of new trend.”

Click here to see which county has the most expensive home in America.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.