Meanwhile, the Dayton area, including Greene, Miami and Montgomery counties, mirrored the statewide trend, with 3,722 housing units in some stage of foreclosure, also representing about one in 99 housing units. That’s down 57 percent from 2010 and about 6 percent from a year ago, according to RealtyTrac’s figures.
While foreclosures are trending downward, default notices, scheduled auctions, bank repossessions and other foreclosure filings remain a persistent strain on housing markets in Ohio, which still ranks among the Top 10 states with the highest foreclosure rates.
Besides Ohio, states with the highest foreclosure rates in 2015 were New Jersey (1.91 percent of housing units with a foreclosure filing); Florida (1.77 percent); Maryland (1.60 percent); Nevada (1.40 percent); Illinois (1.26 percent); Delaware (1.05 percent); South Carolina (1.01 percent); and Indiana (0.91 percent).
Experts say Ohio’s ranking largely reflects a backlog of foreclosures on highly distressed, low-value properties.
“It takes an awful long time to get a clear deed to the property once somebody starts the foreclosure process or decides they’re not going to make (mortgage) payments anymore,” said Ralph Mantica, former president of the Dayton Area Board of Realtors.
Many properties that began the foreclosure process years ago are still winding their way through the court system, Mantica said. That’s due in part to housing reforms aimed at preventing the abuses that abruptly forced people out of their homes during the 2007-2008 housing bust.
Homeowners facing foreclosure can now request mediation and loan modifications, which can give them a second chance but also cause unnecessary delays for some foreclosure cases in which the owner ends up losing their home anyway.
As a result, the average time to foreclosure in Ohio was up to 724 days last year from 703 days in 2014 and 439 days in 2010, according to RealtyTrac figures. That’s well above the national average of 629 days last year.
Still, the RealtyTrac report shows the worst of the financial crisis passed years ago.
Nationally, overall foreclosure activity has fallen 62 percent over the past five years to just under 1.1 million U.S. properties with foreclosure filings in 2015 — the lowest annual total since 2006 — the year before the Great Recession began.
“In 2015, we saw a return to normal, healthy foreclosure activity in many markets even as banks continued to clean up some of the last vestiges of distress left over from the last housing crisis,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “The increase in bank repossessions that we saw for the year was evidence of this cleanup phase, which largely involves completing foreclosure.”
Locally, an improving job market, higher wages and an increasingly robust economy have all contributed to a housing market rebound that saw sales hit their highest peak ever over the summer.
Dayton was one of dozens of metro areas that reached new home price peaks in 2015 thanks to one of the hottest summer selling seasons in years.
The DABR reported in June that the average sales price in the local area hit an all-time high of $152,975, up about 7 percent from $142,407 in the same month a year ago, as sales continued to sizzle.
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