Page 68 - Lighting Magazine December 2017

forECast 2018 | Vacancy rates
Housing Trends
Zombies Are Dying
Recent statistics indicate the amount of abandoned properties has declined 22 percent over last year.
66 enLIGHTenment magazine | december 2017
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According to the 2017 U.S. Residential Va- cant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report released October 24 by Irvine, Calif.-based ATTOM Data Solutions – the curator of the nation’s largest multi-sourced property data- base – nearly 1.4 million (1,367,793) U.S. residential properties (1 to 4 units) were vacant as of the end of the third quarter of 2017 — representing 1.58 percent of all residential properties nationwide.
The 1.58 percent vacant property rate nationwide decreased slightly from 1.63 percent a year ago, but vacant property rates increased from a year ago in 81 of the 149 metropolitan statistical areas analyzed in the report (54 percent), including Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Phoenix.
The report analyzes public record tax, deed and mortgage data collected by ATTOM Data Solutions —
including foreclosure status, equity, and owner- occupancy status — matched against monthly updated vacant property data from the U.S. Postal Service.
The report also shows that the number of vacant “zombie” pre-foreclosure properties — which have started the foreclosure process, but have not yet been repossessed by the foreclosing lender — de- creased 22 percent from one year ago to 14,312 as of the end of the third quarter 2017, 67 percent below the peak of 44,030 in the third quarter of 2013. The number of vacant bank-owned proper- ties decreased 48 percent from one year ago to 24,026 as of the end of the third quarter of 2017.
Zombie foreclosures have dwindled dramatically over the last four years as a supply-starved housing market has soaked up even some of the most highly