Foreclosures on the rise nationwide, data shows
Florida had the most yearly foreclosures per ZIP code, an analysis shows.
With home prices around the United States nearing record highs, a new data analysis shows that foreclosure filings nationwide have spiked as well.
Foreclosure filings increased by 71% between 2020 and 2025, according to an analysis of Attom data by ABC News and ABC Owned Television Stations.
The data analysis found that Florida had the highest number of yearly foreclosure filings per ZIP code, followed by New Jersey, Delaware, Nevada, South Carolina, Illinois, California, Maryland, Ohio and Arizona.
"If there are economic stresses on a household, people have to make decisions," said Jacob Inwald, director of litigation for economic justice at Legal Services NYC. "What bill am I going to pay now? What bill am I going to put off?"
'It can happen to anybody'
Those economic stresses can even threaten homeownership, Arizona resident Emily Arner told ABC News. Arner, a flight attendant and mother of three, bought a house in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler with her husband in early 2022.
"We just immediately fell in love with it," Arner said. "It had a great backyard. It had a big giant tree with a lot of shade in the backyard, which obviously here, shade is very hard to come by."
"We had no plans to ever leave," she said. "That was going to be our home."
But when her husband lost his job last year, Arner said they soon realized that their ability to remain in their dream home was in jeopardy.
"My husband's job was great, and we could afford it, but once he lost his job, it was this huge mortgage payment and we had no way to cover it, no way to pay for it, so we tried everything that we could possibly think of," said Arner.
The family ultimately lost their home in September 2025 to foreclosure, Arner said. They ended up moving to a rental unit a mile away.
"If you don't have savings or a way to cover yourself, it absolutely can happen to you," Arner said. "It can happen to anybody."
'Targeted for bad loans'
While the number of foreclosures is still well below the amount the country experienced during the peak of the housing crisis more than 15 years ago, experts point to higher mortgage rates and property taxes, the rising cost of insurance, and the end of pandemic-era protections as factors that have led to the recent increase.
Texas residents in the ZIP code 77327, located in rural Liberty County northeast of Houston, had the nation's highest number of foreclosures in a recent six-year period, with 8,189.
ABC News' analysis found that homeowners of color have been disproportionately affected. The average number of annual foreclosures in majority non-white ZIP codes has been more than three times the national average, according to the data.
"We are talking about a crisis that disproportionately impacts communities of color and the elderly because those are the communities that were targeted for bad loans in the first place," Inwald said.
Inwald, whose organization serves people facing foreclosure in New York City, said that there are still people impacted by the foreclosure crisis that peaked between 2007 and 2010.
"In some respects, that same foreclosure crisis is still going on," Inwald said. "Many of the clients that we see have been in foreclosure or at risk of foreclosure for years. Many of the cases that are getting brought in court were brought before and did not succeed."
Advocates say that homeowners who fear that foreclosure could be on the horizon should seek help from a housing counselor as soon as possible -- but should make sure that the adviser who they consult with is reputable. Inwald said that homeowners in need of assistance should contact their state's attorney general's office to be pointed in the right direction.
Arner, hoping to prevent other families from losing their home, has been vocal on social media about what she, her husband and their children experienced during the foreclosure process.
"It just was a tough situation to feel like such a failure, and to feel like we had just done everything wrong, and it helped me to be able to share that, and to say it's OK to feel this way," Arner said.
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