A website has ranked Orlando as one of the ten cities in the United States where foreclosure rates have surged the most.
In a report about surging foreclosures published on Monday, July 24, Realtor.com provided a breakdown of the current cities in which foreclosures are on the rise.
The report indicates that through June, Orlando had the sixth highest foreclosure rate, with 5.1 foreclosure filings per 10,000 housing units. That is more than twice the national average, which saw 2.5 foreclosure filings per 10,000 units.
Paul Urich, a bankruptcy attorney in Orlando, says he’s witnessed the rising foreclosure rates firsthand in recent months, citing the end of the COVID-19-related foreclosure moratorium and more expensive basic goods. Ulrich says many people having difficulty paying their mortgages are retired, and that inflation is to blame for much of their troubles.
“The mortgage companies are over COVID, and they’re now putting these houses up for foreclosure,” said Ulrich.
To generate its report, Realtor.com compared data for June 2023 from ATTOM, a property data company, to data from May 2023 and June 2022. According to the company, only one metro area per state was selected for the list.
The data shows a higher concentration of foreclosures in the southeast than anywhere else in the United States.
Leading the list was Atlantic City, New Jersey, which experienced 6.8 foreclosure filings per 10,000 housing units in June. Ranking second is Florence, South Carolina, which is followed by New Haven, Connecticut and Baltimore, Maryland. Mobile, Alabama ranked fifth on the list.
Although rates across the country are high, the website suggests that the surge is not cause for the concern. To put the current rates into perspective, the company says that in the first six months of this year, the total homes receiving a foreclosure filing was just under 186,000.
In the years around the housing recession of the late 2000s, the company says that about “15 times as many borrowers were going through foreclosure.”
“There is no wave of foreclosures threatening to wash across the country, bringing down home values like the epic crash that occurred during the Great Recession,” reads the report.
For more details and information, read the full report by visiting Realtor.com’s Foreclosure Rates Are Surging webpage.