RealtyTrac released its 2015 Year-End U.S. Foreclosure Market Report January 14, finding foreclosures at a nine-year low.
Foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions and back repossessions, were down 3 percent over 2014 and 62 percent over the peak in 2010. After four years on the decline, bank repossessions increased.
Another positive– homes had been in the foreclosure process in 2015 for a slightly shorter period of time. The length of the process fell one day to 629 over the previous quarter, and was still up by 4 percent over the same time last year.
“In 2015 we saw a return to normal, healthy foreclosure activity in many markets even as banks continued to clean up some of the last vestiges of distress left over from the last housing crisis,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac in a statement.
Six metro areas among the nation’s 20 largest posted increases in foreclosure activity:
- Boston, up 44 percent
- St. Louis, up 38 percent
- Dallas, up 25 percent
- Detroit, up 22 percent
- New York, up 9 percent
- Houston, up less than 1 percent
The metros with the highest foreclosure rates include:
- Atlantic City, New Jersey, at 3.43 percent
- Trenton, New Jersey, at 2.14 percent
- Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida, at 2.03 percent
- Jacksonville, Florida, 2.02 percent
- Miami, Florida, at 1.98 percent
Blomquist says that the increase in foreclosures in Texas is impacted by the local economic problems, especially in the oil industry. The state saw an increase in foreclosure activity by 16 percent annually in 2015. Homes in 2015 were in the foreclosure process in Texas for 266 days.
Bank repossessions in Texas upticked by 115 percent over 2014.