Miami-Dade County has the second-highest rate of repeat foreclosures of any major housing market, topped only by New York City, according to a newly released report from Attom Data Solutions.
Miami-Dade’s rate was 32 percent, followed by Los Angeles County with 39 percent and Maricopa County (Phoenix), with 26 percent, according to Attom’s April 2017 report. New York’s rate was 54 percent.
Attom defines a repeat foreclosure as a foreclosure start filed in 2016 on a property with an address and owner ‘s last name combination that also showed a previous foreclosure start with the same property address and owner combination in the last 10 years.
Nationwide, foreclosure activity in April dropped to the lowest level since November 2015. Foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 77,049 U.S. properties in April, down 7 percent from the previous month and down 23 percent from a year ago.
Among 217 metro areas with a population of at least 200,000, the highest foreclosure rates in April were in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Trenton, New Jersey; Rockford, Illinois; and Philadelphia, according to the report.
Miami-Dade County saw its foreclosure rate fall 35 percent in April, year-over-year, to 986 foreclosure filings from 1,509 filings in April 2016. Miami-Dade’s rate of foreclosures still remains higher than in Broward County, which had 730 and Palm Beach County 578 in April.
Miami was once one of the worst hit in the nation for foreclosures during the housing crash, in no small part because of loose mortgage restrictions and a surplus of condo projects.
As home prices recovered and buyers adopted all-cash purchases, however, the region’s foreclosure rate has steadily fallen over the past few years.