Tucson-area foreclosures reach lowest level since 2006

Foreclosure rates in Pima County in 2017 dropped to their lowest level since the start of the housing crash.

There were 1,393 foreclosures last year, data from the Pima County Recorder’s Office shows. That was the lowest since 2006, when 627 homes were sold in foreclosure.

The following year, distressed sales more than doubled to 1,564 and climbed steadily for four years, peaking at 6,956 foreclosures in 2011.

The local numbers mirror what’s happening nationally.

ATTOM Data Solutions, a national property database, said foreclosure activity was at its lowest in 12 years.

“Thanks to a housing boom driven primarily by a scarcity of supply, which has helped to limit home purchases to the most highly qualified — and low-risk — borrowers, the U.S. housing market has the luxury of playing a version of foreclosure limbo in which it searches for how low foreclosures can go,” said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. “There are a few notable local market exceptions playing a different version of foreclosure limbo in which a backlog of legacy foreclosure activity left over from the last housing crisis is still winding its way through a labyrinthine foreclosure process.”

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That includes the District of Columbia and five states which posted year-over-year increases in foreclosures in 2017: Illinois, Oklahoma, Louisiana, West Virginia and Vermont.

And, analysts in Southern California said that affordability is now the concern for that market, even as foreclosures decline.

“With wage growth not meeting equity growth across many Southern California markets — coupled with rising interest rates — there are some concerns that foreclosures could be on the rise in 2018,” said Michael Mahon, president of First Team Real Estate.

The local housing market is also experiencing an upward push in home prices with the median new-home price expected to climb above $300,000 in 2018, said housing analyst Ginger Kneup, owner of Bright Future Real Estate Research.

“As I look at the activity for 2018,” she said, “it is likely that a year from now the conversation will be about the disappearing market under $250,000.”