The Baton Rouge metro area ranked 27th in the nation for the proportion of properties with foreclosure activity in January, according to ATTOM, which licenses foreclosure data.
Foreclosure filings, default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions, together were up 10% from December and almost 111% from January 2021 in the Capital Region, the firm’s data shows. Nationally, such filings were up 29% from a month ago and 139% from a year ago.
The spike in foreclosure activity was not a surprise, says Rick Sharga, executive vice president of RealtyTrac, an ATTOM company. Foreclosures typically slow down during the holidays and pick up in the new year. This year, the increases were more dramatic than usual now that foreclosure restrictions placed on mortgage servicers by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have expired, he says.
“Foreclosure completions are still far below normal levels—less than half as many as in January of 2020 before the pandemic was declared, and about 60% lower than the number of foreclosure completions in 2019,” Sharga says. “We’re likely to continue seeing large year-over-year percentage increases for the rest of this year, but it’s also likely that foreclosure activity will remain below historically normal levels until the end of 2022.”
Louisiana ranks 15th on the list among states, though the state only showed an increase of about 6% from December and about 3% year over year.
Nationwide, one in every 5,922 housing units had a foreclosure filing in January 2022. States with the highest foreclosure rates were New Jersey (one in every 2,336 housing units with a foreclosure filing); Illinois (one in every 2,740); Nevada (one in every 3,119); Michigan (one in every 3,127); and Ohio (one in every 3,251).
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