Halloween news: Maine has scary number of foreclosed 'zombie' homes
Just in time for Halloween, a new study says Maine has one of the country’s highest rates of foreclosures on so-called “zombie” real estate properties.
No, they’re not homes owned by cash-strapped members of the living dead.
The state ranks No. 4 in the U.S. according to the percentage of pending foreclosures on properties without an owner-occupant, ATTOM Data Solutions said Thursday in a news release.
Nationwide, an average of 2.96% of all homes in the process of foreclosure were vacated by their owners during the current quarter of the year, the California-based real estate analytics company found.
In Maine, the rate was 6.7%, and only Kansas, Oregon and Montana had higher rates. Kansas' and Oregon's were highest, at 7.9%, and Montana's was 7.4%.
Over 1.5 million U.S. single-family houses and condos, representing 1.5% of all homes, were vacant in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to the analysis. About 288,000 homes were facing foreclosure, and 8,500 of them were sitting empty.
Despite Maine’s high zombie rate, the national percentage is down slightly from 3.2% in the third quarter of the year.
“One of the most visible signs of the housing market crash during the Great Recession keeps receding into the past," said Todd Teta, chief product officer with ATTOM. "While pockets of zombie foreclosures remain, neighborhoods throughout the country are confronting fewer and fewer of the empty, decaying properties that were symbolic of the fallout from the housing market crash during the recession."
Fittingly, the company released its analysis on Halloween, at one minute after midnight.
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments