Housing Market In N.J., 2 Local Towns Just Got Some Very Bad News

New Jersey and two of its communities share a distinction that many local homeowners may find disconcerting. And it may be one of the reasons why people are fleeing the Garden State more than anywhere else.

For the second year in a row, New Jersey had the highest foreclosure rates in the nation in 2016, with 1.86 percent of its housing units filing for foreclosure. The statistics come from RealtyTrac, which monitors the real estate market.

RealtyTrac, which tracks metropolitan areas with a population of at least 200,000, also said two New Jersey communities had the highest foreclosure rates in 2016: Atlantic City, with 3.39 percent of housing units having a foreclosure filing, and Trenton, at 2.16 percent.

The metropolitan areas include communities that are within at least a 10-mile radius of Atlantic City and Trenton, so the problem is not just one reserved for the cities.

The news comes just weeks after a United Van Lines report showed more people are leaving New Jersey than any other state, the fourth time in five years that the state led America in outward migration.

But it wasn't clear if foreclosure rates have anything to do with the departures, since New Jersey also has other issues that could be forcing people to leave. The state, for one, has consistently had the highest property taxes in the nation while also having some of the highest property values in the country.

Read more: Top 10 Cities Everyone's Moving to in 2017

Once again, New Jersey bucked a nationwide trend that has shown a declining rate of foreclosures. RealtyTrac said the national numbers are now at a 10-year low.

“The national foreclosure rate stayed within an historically normal range for the third consecutive year in 2016, even as banks continued to clear out legacy foreclosures from the last housing bubble, particularly in the final quarter of the year,” Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions, the parent company of RealtyTrac, said in a statement.

Other states with high foreclosure rates were Delaware (1.51 percent); Maryland (1.37 percent); Florida (1.18 percent); Illinois (1.10 percent); Nevada (1.09 percent); South Carolina (0.92 percent); Connecticut (0.91 percent); Ohio (0.89 percent) and New Mexico (0.78 percent).

Other metropolitan statistical areas, with a population of at least 200,000, that had the highest foreclosure rates in 2016 were Rockford, Illinois (1.54 percent); Philadelphia (1.53 percent); Lakeland-Winter Haven, Florida (1.46 percent); Baltimore (1.45 percent); Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida (1.38 percent); Chicago (1.35 percent); Columbia, South Carolina (1.32 percent) and Miami (1.30 percent).

Several New Jersey communities have among the 100 worst real estate markets in the country, according to two new studies.

With more new homes being sold in July than in nearly 10 years, the personal finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2016’s Best Real-Estate Markets. Four New Jersey markets are just not keeping up with the times, the study says.

Also, HSH.com, a mortgage-tracking website, put together a "Home price recovery index" using the Federal Housing Finance Agency's Home Price Index as a basis to determine which housing markets have fully recovered and which still lag behind the housing recovery.

The time period represented runs from the first quarter of 1991 and through the second quarter of 2016.

Read more: These N.J. Towns Have Among the 100 Worst Real Estate Markets In U.S., Studies Say

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