ATTOM Mid-Year 2026: 227,548 U.S. Properties Had Foreclosure Filings in H1, Up 21%

The first-half 2026 headline numbers

ATTOM's Mid-Year 2026 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report is the anchor number for anyone building an acquisition pipeline this year. In the first six months of 2026, ATTOM counted 227,548 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings — a metric ATTOM defines as default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions — which it reported as up 21 percent from the same period a year earlier and up 28 percent from the same period two years earlier. That worked out to roughly one in every 632 U.S. housing units over the six-month span.

Definitions matter here, and investors routinely blur them. "Properties with one or more foreclosure filings" is a count of distinct properties, not a count of documents, and it bundles three different stages of the process together. A foreclosure start is narrower: the point at which a lender initiates the foreclosure process, the first-stage filing. It is not a scheduled auction, and it is not a completed bank repossession. Any percentage change in starts is a statement about how many cases entered the process, not about how many will reach a sale, how many will reinstate or be modified, or what will be biddable at a courthouse or online sale on a given date.

Starts, completions, and what ATTOM's leadership said

The starts subtotal for the first half of 2026 was 164,566 properties that entered the foreclosure process, which ATTOM reported as up 18 percent from the first half of 2025 and up 66 percent from the first half of 2020. Completed foreclosures (REOs) rose 33 percent in the same first-half comparison. ATTOM CEO Rob Barber framed the result as a market in transition rather than a break:

"Foreclosure activity continued to increase in the first half of 2026, but the broader picture remains one of a market that is gradually returning to more typical patterns," said Rob Barber, CEO at ATTOM.

Commenting on the same first-half data, Mirza Hodzic of BlackWolf Advisory Group told reporters that the increase reflects "a mix of financial pressure and continued normalization," adding that higher taxes, insurance and household costs make recovery harder for borrowers who fall behind even when the mortgage payment itself has not changed. That is Hodzic's read on the national first-half numbers — it is not ATTOM's own explanation, and it is not an attribution to any single state's figures.

Florida posted the highest state rate

Florida recorded the highest first-half 2026 foreclosure rate of any state: 27,494 properties with foreclosure filings, equal to 0.27 percent of housing units, or about one in every 373 homes, with filings up roughly 33 percent from a year earlier and roughly 37 percent from two years earlier. On raw starts volume in the first half, Florida recorded 20,358 — second only to Texas at 20,739.

At the metro level, ATTOM listed Cape Coral, Florida at 0.35 percent of housing units with a filing, alongside Cleveland, Ohio (0.33 percent), Jacksonville, Florida (0.31 percent), Ocala, Florida (0.31 percent) and Jacksonville, North Carolina (0.31 percent). Other states among the ten worst first-half rates included Nevada and New Jersey (0.22 percent each), Ohio (0.20 percent), and Maryland and Utah (0.19 percent each). Among states with at least 500 first-half filings, ATTOM reported the largest year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity in Idaho (up 59 percent), Colorado (up 57 percent), Georgia (up 52 percent), North Carolina (up 47 percent) and Mississippi (up 45 percent).

Read the timeline stat correctly

ATTOM also reported that properties foreclosed in Q2 2026 had been in the foreclosure process an average of 563 days, which ATTOM described as the lowest level since 2013, down 2 percent from the prior quarter and down 13 percent from a year earlier. That number is a historical average for cases that already finished. It is not a forecast of how quickly current filings will reach a sale, not a measure of your holding period, and not a redemption or title-risk metric. If you are underwriting a specific asset, the only usable timeline is the one on that case docket, pulled directly and dated.

The most recent monthly print in these sources: June 2026

For the latest month covered by the sources below, ATTOM reported 39,327 properties with filings in June 2026, with 26,217 starts (down 4 percent from May 2026, up 20 percent from June 2025) and 4,773 lender repossessions (up 17 percent month over month, up 23 percent year over year). Note what is not here: none of the cited sources is an ATTOM July 2026 monthly report or July 2026 state table. If you encounter a state-level July percentage circulating secondhand, check its publication date and the report it came from before using it — monthly state percentages are frequently mis-sourced, and a single month's aggregate should be checked against county filings regardless.

What this changes about your process

Nothing in this release describes bidding conditions, competition, or what is actually purchasable in any county. It describes counts, rates and durations. The defensible use of a mid-year print is as a targeting signal for where to pull records: confirm the state and metro figures at the county recorder or clerk level, tie each start to a case number, and re-verify status before every sale date. ATTOM notes its counts come from more than 3,000 counties and that filings entered in one reporting period may have been recorded earlier — a reconciliation problem you inherit the moment you build a pipeline off aggregate data instead of source documents.