ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property data, and real estate analytics, has officially published released from its first-quarter 2025 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, which analyzes publicly recorded real estate data collected by ATTOM, including foreclosure status, equity and owner-occupancy status, matched against monthly updated vacancy data.
Going by the available details, this particular report reveals that 1.4 million (1,372,396) residential properties in the United States are currently vacant, making up 1.3 percent, or one in every 76 homes.
Furthermore, ATTOM would go on to discover how 212,268 residential properties across U.S. were in the process of foreclosure during first quarter of 2025, down 1.5 percent from the fourth quarter of last year and down 12.6 percent from the first quarter of 2024.
Among those pre-foreclosure properties, 7,094 sit vacant as zombie foreclosures (pre-foreclosure properties abandoned by owners). Now, while this figure is virtually the same as in the last quarter, it delivers a downturn of almost 3.3 percent from a year ago.
These figures would also go on to showcase a decrease in foreclosure activity for five consecutive quarters, following a surge in cases that occurred after the nationwide moratorium on lenders pursuing delinquent homeowners, implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, was lifted in mid-2021.
“You’d have to take a very long walk through most U.S. communities to come across even one zombie foreclosure—and even then, you might not find any,” said Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM. “This marks a significant turnaround from the period following the Great Recession in the late 2000s, when a collapsing housing market and abandoned properties posed serious risks to many neighborhoods. The latest figures highlight one of the many benefits of the nation’s prolonged housing market boom for both homeowners and renters alike.”
Taking a area-specific view of things, the number of zombie properties is understood to have gone down or remained the same quarterly across states, usually decreasing by less than 25. On the other hand, this number has increased in 28 states, albeit by only small amounts.
You see, the states with biggest percent decreases, which had at least 50 zombie homes a year ago, include Maryland (zombie properties down 38 percent, from 104 to 65), Georgia (down 35 percent, from 81 to 53), California (down 30 percent, from 310 to 217), New Jersey (down 23 percent, from 260 to 199), and Ohio (down 16 percent, from 597 to 503).
In contrast, largest annual increases among states that had at least 50 zombie foreclosures last year came across Missouri (zombie properties up 85 percent, from 27 to 50), Michigan (up 51 percent, from 55 to 83), South Carolina (up 31 percent, from 74 to 97), Indiana (up 28 percent, from 215 to 276), and Kansas (up 26 percent, from 69 to 87).
Next up, we must dig into how the vacancy rate for all residential properties has remained pretty much the same for 12 quarters in a row. Here, states with the highest vacancy rates for all residential properties are Oklahoma (2.41 percent during the first quarter of this year), Kansas (2.34 percent), Missouri (2.18 percent), Alabama (2.16 percent) and West Virginia (2.09 percent).
The flipside of it would reveal that states with the lowest overall vacancy rates include New Hampshire (0.34 percent), Vermont (0.41 percent), New Jersey (0.49 percent), Idaho (0.52 percent), and Connecticut (0.56 percent).
Among other things, we ought to mention how, out of 171 metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. with at least 100 properties facing possible foreclosure, the highest zombie foreclosure rates were observed across Peoria, IL (15.5 percent of properties in the foreclosure process are vacant); Wichita, KS (12.5 percent); Kansas City, MO (10.9 percent); and Toledo, OH (10.6 percent).
If we talk about major metro areas with at least 500,000 residential properties and at least 100 homes facing foreclosure, they include Cleveland, OH (9.1 percent of homes in the foreclosure process are vacant); St. Louis, MO (8.9 percent); Indianapolis, IN (8.5 percent) and Detroit, MI (6.1 percent).
Moving on, ATTOM even focused on investor-owned homes. Here, out of 24.8 million investor-owned homes, around 877,800 were deemed as vacant.
