Data and Maps

Data Points  

• The US Census Bureau reported that 2.9 percent of the nation’s homes were vacant in the First Quarter of 2008, the highest share since the government started counting in 1957. The vacancy rates for homes built in or after April 2000 was 9.8 percent, more than triple that of houses constructed earlier.
  
• Declines in property values from foreclosures nationwide through the end of 2009 will exceed $352 billion.
  
• Lenders do not make money on foreclosures. Losses range from 20 cents to 60 cents on the dollar. Lenders typically lose $50,000 or more on one foreclosure.
  
• In November, 2008, there was an average 3,100 foreclosures per day in the U.S., according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California real estate data company. That’s triple the 1,000 per day average in 1933, the worst year of the Great Depression, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  
• Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions are seeing an increase in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to an April 2008 study by the National Coalition for the Homeless.
  
• Recent analyses by the Woodstock Institute indicate that nearly 35 percent of foreclosure filings in 2007 occurred in two-to-six unit, multi-family properties. Therefore, many renters are losing their homes as a result of foreclosures.
  
• The states most affected by foreclosure are California, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois and New Jersey. Most of these states with the highest foreclosure rates saw unprecedented growth fueled by subprime loans while Michigan’s and Ohio’s rates were caused by job losses and low housing demand. The lowest foreclosure rates are being experienced by slow growth states like North Dakota, West Virginia and Vermont.
  
• An estimated 300,000 renters live in units at risk of foreclosure over the next few years.

Data Resources

There are a number of free data resources that may prove helpful to understanding the foreclosure situation in a particular region, municipality or region.

Foreclosure Needs Score, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) researchers calculated a foreclosure needs score for all CDBG entitlement jurisdictions and ZIP codes in each state, using measures of subprime lending, foreclosures, and delinquency from Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) Applied Analytics (formerly McDash) and vacancy rates from the U.S. Postal Service. The score for any jurisdiction is relative to that of the neediest jurisdiction within the state, which is assigned a score of 100. Thus, if a jurisdiction receives a score of 50, it is estimated to be half as needy as the worst-off jurisdiction.

Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council
Provides HMDA data covering home purchase and home improvement loans and financing. The data is broken down into census tract levels. The information is provided in September of each year for the previous year. The data contain information about loan originations; loan purchases; and denied, incomplete, or withdrawn applications.

Neighborhood Stabilization Local Level Data, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Data set includes the number of households from the 2000 U.S. Census, estimated number of foreclosure starts from January 2007 to June 2008, estimated number of mortgages, estimated foreclosure rate, number of residential addresses vacant 90 or more days as of June 2008, total residential addresses, estimated 90 or more day vacancy rate, number of conventional loans made between 2004 and 2006 where the rate spread is 3 percentage points above the Treasury security of comparable maturity (HMDA), number of conventional loans made between 2004 and 2006 (HMDA), percentage of high-cost loans made between 2004 and 2006 (HMDA), June 2008 county or place unemployment rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics), and a measure of price decline in home values using the OFHEO Housing Price Index to calculate price decline from peak value in Q2 of any year between 2000 and 2008 and the Q2 home price in 2008 for the particular MSA.

Neighborhood Watch, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
The system provides the ability to identify and analyze patterns, by geographic area or originating lender, in loans which became 90 days delinquent during their first two years. Information is available at the state, region, county, city, homeownership center and zip code levels.

Preforeclosure and REO Data, RealtyTrac
RealtyTrac offers data on foreclosure filings by state, county and zip code monthly with about a two month time lag and provides maps and lists of information on specific properties up for auction, bank owned, or resale. Because states have differing foreclosure laws, foreclosure data should not be used to make comparisons across state lines. In addition, RealtyTrac obtains its data from administrative records. Comparisons of the growth in foreclosures from one county to the next also may not be precise.

Vacancy Data, U.S. Postal Service (USPS)
Provides monthly numbers of vacant properties at the census tract level with about a two month lag. Recently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) entered into an agreement with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to receive quarterly aggregate data on addresses identified by the USPS as having been "vacant" or "No-Stat" in the previous quarter.

Mapping Resources

There are several sources that provide maps of foreclosures across the country or in a particular county or region that may prove helpful.

• PolicyMap, created and maintained by The Reinvestment Fund, is an online geographic information system that provides free access to thousands of indicators at a variety of geographic levels in the form of maps, tables, and charts. The site includes HUD Neighborhood Stabilization Program Targeting data down to the census tract level and vacancy data from the USPS and the US Census.
• The Wall Street Journal has posted an interactive map of the United States showing delinquency rates for each area.
• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has created regularly updated maps that display regional variations in owner-occupied foreclosures. The maps display information for each state, county and zip code including loans in foreclosure per 1,000 housing units, REO’s per 1,000 housing units, share of loans that are adjustable rate mortgages, and share of loans that are 90 days or more delinquent.
• Hotpads Foreclosure Heat Maps at provide a very general look at how high foreclosure numbers are in each city, county or state. Heat maps show whether a city or county has high foreclosures (red) or low (blue) or somewhere in between. The map is based on RealtyTrac data. This free internet service does not show the actual location of foreclosed properties.
• Many localities have used local foreclosure records to create detailed maps to guide their foreclosure recovery plan. These include Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles.