This Is the City With the Most Foreclosures

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 12, 8:30AM EST

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This Is the City With the Most Foreclosures — © Sean Pavone / iStock via Getty Images

For the most part, the U.S. housing market is as healthy as it has ever been. The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out that the median amount of time a home for sale from July 2020 to June 2021 was on the market just one week. Median listing prices over the same period rose from $272,500 to $305,000.

One reason the demand has been so high recently is low interest rates for mortgages. Although they have risen slightly, they remain near historic lows. Additionally, home demand in some markets has been extraordinary, as people leave expensive and large coastal metros such as New York and San Francisco for places inland that are less expensive and supposedly have a better quality of life. Ironically, prices in these “in demand” markets have risen by double-digit percentages. One reason people can relocate is the mobility caused by the ability to work from home triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not all markets have done well. Recent research from ATTOM, which provides foreclosure data, showed that foreclosures are on the rise. Rick Sharga, executive vice president at RealtyTrac, an ATTOM company, commented: “As expected, now that the moratorium has been over for three months, foreclosure activity continues to increase.”

ATTOM described a foreclosure filing as “default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions.” The U.S. total for October was 20,587. It is worth noting that during the Great Recession, the housing price collapse pushed this number well into the hundreds of thousands.
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The measure for foreclosure rates is foreclosures compared to housing units. The number nationwide was one per 6,675 in October. Among states, the highest rate was in Illinois, at one per 1,923, much worse than second-place Florida at one in every 3,180.

ATTOM looked at 220 metropolitan statistical areas with populations above 200,000. The city with the highest rate was St. Louis at one in every 1,138. It was followed by Trenton at one in every 1,293, Miami at one in every 2,233, Chicago at one in every 2,284 and Cleveland with one in every 2,285.

Click here to see which are the cheapest cities in which to buy a home.
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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.