Texas Foreclosure Rate Drops For 2017, Report Says

Texas foreclosure filings dropped by 8 percent in 2017 compared to the previous year, according to a new report. Nationally, foreclosure filings for 2017 fell 27 percent compared to 2016, reaching their lowest level since 2005, according to the report. There were 676,535 properties with foreclosure filings in 2017, a 76 percent drop from the filings peak during the housing crisis in 2010.

In Texas, there were 25,938 properties with foreclosure filings compared to 28,223 in 2016. Nationwide, New Jersey had the highest rate of foreclosure filings for 2017. The total number of housing units with foreclosure filings in New Jersey for the year represented 1.61 percent of total housing units in the state, but overall the number of foreclosure filings decreased compared to 2016.

Texas was also one of the states that had a year-over-year decrease in repossessions which tracks along with the national trend. The report shows that the state had 16,856 fewer repossessions in 2017, or 29 percent less than 2016.

Foreclosure filings in Texas have dropped by 72 percent since 2010 when the state had 91,151 foreclosures, the report said.

Nationwide, the properties with foreclosure filings in 2017 represented 0.51 percent of all U.S. housing units, according to ATTOM Data, a multi-sourced property database. When filings were at a peak during the housing crisis, they represented 2.23 percent of all U.S. housing units.

Along with New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois and Connecticut had the highest foreclosure rates in 2017. In Delaware, 1.13 percent of housing units had a foreclosure filing and in Maryland that number was 0.95 percent, according to the report.

South Dakota, North Dakota, West Virginia, Montana and Mississippi had the lowest rates of foreclosure filings in the U.S. for 2017, according to the report.

“Thanks to a housing boom driven primarily by a scarcity of supply, which has helped to limit home purchases to the most highly qualified — and low-risk — borrowers, the U.S. housing market has the luxury of playing a version of foreclosure limbo in which it searches for how low foreclosures can go,” Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions, said in a press release.

The report is based on publicly recorded and published foreclosure filings collected from more than 2,500 counties nationwide.

You can read the full report from ATTOM Data here.

Caption: In this Jan. 20, 2009 file photo, bank repo, foreclosure and for sale signs sit outside a foreclosed home in Houston. Most congressional Democrats say the quickest way to save homeowners is to let them declare bankruptcy and allow judges to dictate new mortgage terms. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)