Four Metro Areas Account For 10 Percent of Nation’s Completed Foreclosures

While the number of foreclosures has been steadily declining since reach a peak four to five years ago, large percentages of the nation's foreclosures are still concentrated in a few areas, according to recent reports.

CoreLogic's April 2015 National Foreclosure Report released this week found that four metropolitan areas accounted for 10 percent of the nation's completed foreclosures for the 12-month period ending April 30, 2015. In addition, about 45 percent of the completed foreclosures during that same period occurred in five states.

The four metro areas that accounted for 10 percent of nation's 537,648 completed foreclosures over the 12-month period ending in April 2015 were Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida, leading the way with 16,664; Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, Georgia with 14,815; Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida, with 14,037; and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas, with 7,722. These four areas together combined for 53,238 completed foreclosures in the last 12 months. The Tampa and Orlando areas had foreclosure inventory and serious delinquency rates well above the national averages – Tampa's foreclosure inventory rate of 3.9 percent was nearly three times the national rate of 1.4 percent, while Orlando had double the national rate of foreclosure inventory at 2.8 percent. Tampa's serious delinquency rate of 7.7 percent was more than double the national average of 3.6 percent, while Orlando's serious delinquency rate was 6.4 percent.

Meanwhile, Atlanta and Houston had foreclosure inventories and serious delinquency rates well below the national averages. The foreclosure inventory rates in Atlanta and Houston were 0.8 and 0.6 percent, respectively, and the serious delinquency rates were, respectively, 3.5 percent and 2.5 percent.

The five states that accounted for 45 percent of those 537,648 completed foreclosures in the last 12 months were Florida (106,000), Michigan (49,000), Texas (33,000), Ohio (28,000), and Georgia (27,000), for a total of approximately 243,000.

Florida, one of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, is still seeing high foreclosure volumes despite experiencing large declines in foreclosure inventory. Among states, Florida had the largest year-over-year decline in foreclosure inventory for April with 45.6 percent. Connecticut was next with 35.8 percent. In all, six states experienced year-over-year declines in foreclosure inventory of more than 30 percent in April. Overall, foreclosure inventory declined by about 25 percent year-over-year nationwide in April down to about 521,000 homes (about 1.4 percent of homes with a mortgage). CoreLogic Chief Economist Frank Nothaft said contributing factors to the decline were "employment recovery, foreclosure alternatives, and home-value gains."