Nearly 228,000 American properties received a foreclosure filing in the first half of the year, a 21 percent jump from the same period a year ago and a 28 percent increase from two years prior, CBS News reported, citing data released Thursday by real estate analytics firm ATTOM.
The numbers point to a housing market that is quietly punishing the people who can least afford it. While total foreclosure activity remains well below the 640,864 filings recorded nationally in 2019, the trajectory is unmistakable: after dipping during the pandemic, filings have been climbing back steadily, and the pace is accelerating.
Four states stand out. Idaho saw foreclosure filings leap 59 percent compared to the same period in 2025, the sharpest year-over-year spike among the states flagged in the ATTOM data. Colorado followed at 57 percent, and Georgia at 52 percent. Florida, meanwhile, continues to dominate in raw volume: in June alone, one in every 2,106 housing units in the state carried a foreclosure filing.
This is not a one-quarter blip. The first-quarter data alone showed 118,727 properties with foreclosure filings, a 26 percent year-over-year increase, with Indiana posting the worst rate in the country at one filing for every 739 housing units, nearly two-thirds higher than the national rate of one in 1,211, Fox News reported.
That Indiana-led first quarter was itself part of a longer streak. By August 2025, the country had already logged six consecutive months of year-over-year increases, with three straight months of double-digit annual growth, the New York Post reported. In that single month, 35,697 properties received filings, up 18 percent from the prior August.
The pattern is clear: each new data release confirms what the previous one suggested. The question is no longer whether foreclosures are rising. It is how far and how fast they will go.
ATTOM CEO Rob Barber put it plainly in a statement accompanying the data release:
"Rising foreclosure rates indicate that more homeowners are in financial distress."
Barber added that "the increases also suggest that some homeowners may be facing greater financial strain than they were a year ago." ATTOM defines foreclosure filings to include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions, each representing a distinct stage in a homeowner's loss of control.
The causes are not mysterious. Mortgage rates have pushed higher, with the average 30-year fixed rate climbing to 6.37 percent for the week ending May 7, 2026, up from 5.98 percent in late February. For homeowners who stretched to buy during the pandemic-era frenzy, or who took on adjustable-rate products, those increases translate directly into larger monthly payments.
Meanwhile, the broader affordability crisis that has been well documented in recent housing research continues to grind. When a job loss hits, or a medical bill arrives, or a car breaks down, homeowners who are already stretched thin have nowhere to turn.
Real estate and tax attorney Chad D. Cummings described the dynamic bluntly in comments to the New York Post, noting that Florida and Texas alone posted a combined 32,878 foreclosure starts in the first half of 2025:
"Home equity lines, tax refunds, and pandemic savings have all been tapped."
That observation captures something the headline numbers alone cannot. The financial cushions that carried millions of families through the post-pandemic adjustment period are gone. What remains is a housing market where incomes have not kept pace with prices, a gap that has left American workers tens of thousands of dollars short of what it takes to buy a home in most cities.
No state illustrates the convergence of pressures better than Florida. The Sunshine State has appeared near the top of foreclosure lists in virtually every recent reporting period. In the first half of 2025, it was among the states with the highest foreclosure rates. By August 2025, it ranked third nationally at one filing per 2,512 housing units. And now, in the latest data, its June rate has tightened further to one in 2,106.
Tampa has become the sharpest edge of that crisis. In October, the city recorded 1,087 foreclosure filings, nearly triple the 366 filings from October 2024, giving it the highest foreclosure rate of any major U.S. metro at one in every 1,373 homes, Newsmax reported.
The drivers in Tampa are layered. Hurricane damage has made buyers hesitant. Costly condo safety assessments, mandated after the Surfside collapse tragedy, have added financial burdens to owners who were already stretched. Canadian buyers, once a reliable source of demand, have pulled back. And the post-pandemic surge in demand has collapsed, leaving a massive surplus of condo sellers over buyers and pushing home prices down 3.3 percent year-over-year, the steepest decline of any major U.S. city, extending over ten consecutive months of falling prices.
ATTOM analysts noted that part of Tampa's spike reflects Hillsborough County clearing a backlog of delayed filings. But they emphasized that the city's foreclosure numbers have been elevated for several months, pointing to a deeper weakening of the local market rather than a statistical quirk.
Foreclosure filings are not the only indicator flashing. Short sales, transactions where a home sells for less than the remaining mortgage balance, rose 16 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same quarter a year earlier, as recent reporting on housing strain has detailed. That data, tracked by Realtor.com, suggests a growing number of homeowners are concluding they cannot hold on and are trying to get out before the bank takes the decision away from them.
A short sale is, in many ways, a controlled surrender. The homeowner avoids the full damage of a foreclosure on their credit, and the lender recovers something rather than nothing. But the 16 percent increase in these transactions tells the same story the foreclosure data does: more families are underwater, and more are running out of options.
ATTOM's data shows the broader national picture remains below pre-pandemic norms. The 228,000 filings in the first half of this year are still a fraction of the 640,864 recorded in all of 2019. But that comparison offers cold comfort to the families in Idaho, Colorado, Georgia, and Florida who are watching the numbers climb by 50 percent or more in a single year.
Idaho's 59 percent year-over-year increase is particularly striking. The state experienced one of the most dramatic pandemic-era housing booms in the country, as remote workers flooded into Boise and surrounding areas, driving prices to levels that bore little relationship to local incomes. Now, as that boom recedes, some of those buyers appear to be trapped in homes they cannot afford.
Colorado's 57 percent increase follows a similar pattern. The state's Front Range corridor, Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, saw intense price appreciation during the pandemic years. Rising rates have cooled demand, but the mortgages taken out at peak prices remain.
Georgia's 52 percent spike reflects pressures in the Atlanta metro area and beyond, where rapid growth collided with affordability limits that many buyers were already pushing against. The trend has been building for months, as April data on housing strain across the country made clear.
And then there is Indiana, which led the entire nation in foreclosure rates during the first quarter of 2026. With one filing for every 739 housing units, the state's rate was nearly double the national average, a fact that received relatively little attention given Indiana's lower media profile compared to coastal states.
Several questions remain unanswered. ATTOM's methodology combines default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions into a single "foreclosure filing" count. It is unclear whether the 228,000 figure represents 228,000 unique properties or includes some properties counted at multiple stages of the process.
The year-over-year comparisons for Idaho, Colorado, and Georgia reference "the same period in 2025," but it is not specified whether those percentage increases are based on total filing counts or rates adjusted for housing stock. A state that added significant housing inventory could show a rising filing count even if the underlying rate per home held steady.
And the biggest open question of all: where does this trend plateau? Foreclosures dipped during the pandemic, partly because of federal moratoriums and forbearance programs that kept distressed homeowners in their homes. Some of the current increase may reflect a long-delayed normalization. But a 21 percent year-over-year jump, on top of months of double-digit increases, suggests something more than a return to baseline.
Rob Barber acknowledged as much, noting that while foreclosure levels remain below those seen during the housing crisis, the recent uptick suggests more homeowners may be coming under financial strain. That is careful language from a data executive. The numbers themselves are less diplomatic.
The trend line also carries political weight. With midterm elections approaching, rising foreclosures in swing states like Georgia and Nevada could sharpen voter frustration over housing costs, frustration that has been building for years as wages failed to keep pace with home prices, insurance premiums, and property taxes.
ATTOM's report describes the foreclosure increase as a sign that homeowners are facing "extenuating life circumstances such as a job loss." That is true as far as it goes. But job losses hit harder when there is no savings cushion left, when the mortgage was taken out at an inflated price, and when interest rates have climbed by hundreds of basis points since the loan was signed.
The pandemic-era housing frenzy was fueled by cheap money, remote-work euphoria, and government stimulus that inflated demand beyond what incomes could sustain. The foreclosure data now arriving, quarter after quarter, is the bill for that binge. And ordinary homeowners, not the speculators, not the policymakers, not the institutions that encouraged the frenzy, are the ones paying it.