The highest foreclosure rate of any state once again belonged to Florida in November after being displaced by Maryland [1] in October, according to RealtyTrac [2]'s U.S. Foreclosure Market Report [3] for November 2014 released Thursday.
Florida [4] has now had the nation's highest foreclosure rate in 13 of the last 14 months, according to RealtyTrac. Prior to Maryland posting the highest foreclosure rate for October, Florida had the top rate for 12 straight months.
Both month-over-month and year-over-year declines could not keep Florida from regaining the nation's highest foreclosure rate. Overall, one in every 462 residential properties in Florida had a foreclosure filing (which includes default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions) in November, marking a 4 percent decline from October and a 15 percent decline from November 2013, according to RealtyTrac. It was the 16th consecutive month that the Sunshine State saw a year-over-year decline in foreclosure filings.
While foreclosure activity has been declining in Florida for many months, things have been going in the opposite direction for New Jersey [5]. The Garden State has seen a year-over-year increase in foreclosure activity for 11 of the last 12 months, including a surge of 196 percent in November, according to RealtyTrac. The huge increase pushed New Jersey from ninth in October to second in November in foreclosure rate. In all, one in every 478 residential housing units had a foreclosure filing in New Jersey in November, RealtyTrac reported.
In Maryland [6], foreclosure activity declined month-over-month from one in every 400 units in October to one in every 581 units for November, dropping the Old Line State from first to third among states for highest foreclosure rate, according to RealtyTrac. However, Maryland saw a 93 percent year-over-year increase in foreclosure completions.
Delaware [7], which had the sixth highest foreclosure rate in October, saw increases month-over-month in both foreclosure starts (24 percent) and foreclosure auctions (34 percent), pushing the First State into the fourth position for the highest foreclosure rate, according to RealtyTrac. One in every 693 residential housing units in Delaware had a foreclosure filing in November, RealtyTrac reported.
A spike in foreclosure activity in Utah in November pushed the Beehive State from 12th to fifth for the highest foreclosure rate. REO activity surged by 83 percent month-over-month and 20 percent year-over-year in Utah in November, according to RealtyTrac. November marked Utah's first year-over-year increase in REO activity since June 2011, ending a string of 41 consecutive months with a decline. Utah's foreclosure rate in November was one for every 750 residential housing units.
Rounding out the top 10 for foreclosure rate were Nevada (sixth, 1:783), Illinois (seventh, 1:848), Ohio (eighth, 1:865), Indiana (ninth, 1:932), and South Carolina (10th, 1:933), according to RealtyTrac.