Vacant homes in foreclosure tick upward for 7th straight quarter
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The number of vacant homes in foreclosure continues to rise.
A new report by ATTOM, a land, property, and real estate data analysis company, said 1.3 million residential properties in the United States are vacant. That equates to 1.27%, or one in 78 homes, which is the same as in the third quarter of this year.
In its fourth-quarter 2023 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, ATTOM showed that 320,765 residential properties in the U.S. are in the process of foreclosure in the fourth quarter of this year, up 1.7% from the third quarter of 2023 and up 12.8% from the fourth quarter of 2022.
The total of residential properties facing possible foreclosure that have been vacated by their owners, or zombie foreclosures, rose to 8,903 nationwide in the fourth quarter of 2023, up from 8,782 in the third quarter of 2023 and from 7,722 in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Connecticut saw the second-largest increase in zombie foreclosures from the third quarter of 2023 to the fourth quarter of 2023, up 1%, from 87 to 100. Kentucky was first followed by Maryland third, then Texas and California.
New York continues to have the highest ratio of zombie homes to all residential properties, one of every 2,115 homes.
A growing number of homeowners have faced possible foreclosure following the nationwide moratorium on lenders pursuing delinquent homeowners was imposed after the Coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020, and was lifted in the middle of 2021.
Among those pre-foreclosure properties, about 8,900 sit vacant as zombie foreclosures, which are pre-foreclosure properties abandoned by owners.
That figure also is up slightly from the prior quarter, by 1.4%, and up 15.3% from a year ago. The latest increase marks the seventh straight quarterly rise.
However, the fourth-quarter count of zombie properties represents only a tiny portion of the nation's total housing stock - just one of every 11,412 homes around the U.S.
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