Hundreds of thousands of homes in the US are now labeled as “zombie” foreclosures. That's when the owner of a foreclosed home leaves only to find out years later that he or she still legally owns the home and is on the hook for property taxes and other fees. Such cases occur in more than a third of foreclosures, industry figures show.
Although it's hard to quantify exactly how many homes fall into the category, real estate information company RealtyTrac says that, in the first three months of the year, roughly 302,000 homes qualified as “zombie” properties because the owner has moved out, but the bank has not yet taken possession.
Home prices rose by 0.1% in September from the prior month and by 3.6% from one year ago, the largest gain in six years, according to a report released Monday by Lender Processing Services.
Sixty-five percent of U.S. housing markets are worse off today than they were four years ago according to the California-based real estate research firm RealtyTrac.
We've all heard that the housing bubble's pop led to thousands of foreclosures, but its interactive maps like this that really show how prevalent the problem was — and still is. Part of a project on 30 election issues, the map below uses data from RealtyTrac to display foreclosure rates by county.
After nine consecutive months of appreciation, August was the first month where home values decreased by 0.1% to $152,100, according to Zillow.