Revealed - US counties most vulnerable to housing market collapse
Does your county make the top 50 list?
New Jersey, Illinois and parts of California are among the most at-risk housing markets vulnerable to pandemic-fueled economic damage, according to a new report. Findings also detail the parts of the US less susceptible to market changes and those with the most underwater mortgages since a federal eviction moratorium was lifted.
To be sure, macroeconomic forces – a weak economy or anemic job market, to name two – also contribute as mitigating factors to financial corrosion. But Teta said his research focuses quarterly on metrics enabling a snapshot of how different markets are faring.
Given that calculus, a number of scenarios could occur: “The impact from the pandemic would include a number of possibilities,” Teta said. “The main thing would involve prices flattening out or dropping if the pandemic finally causes enough economic disruption to damage local housing markets. By extension, that could lead to more homeowners going underwater because their equity decreases, or more facing foreclosure because of pandemic-related job losses.”
Concern over the latter scenario has been heightened given the end to a federal moratorium on foreclosures that ended at the end of July, the researcher said. “If we start to see a surge of foreclosures, that could raise the supply of homes for sale, which could dampen prices,” Teta observed. “It also could result in more vacant properties subject to decay and blight and lead to a vicious cycle that harms values even more, as it did after the Great Recession a decade ago. While falling prices may lead to homes being more affordable to more people, the impact would likely be negative because it hurts household wealth – a downturn that would have multiple ripple effects across the economy.”
High home values have been a boon to established homeowners, who have been pulling out equity at record levels in securing cash for various means – for college tuition to renovations. But the same appreciation has made homeownership more elusive for first-time homebuyers facing lack of affordability. Meanwhile, those with little equity in their homes have become more vulnerable to financial hardship.
That reality also figures into the mix in predicting the potential for financial corrosive effects stemming from the pandemic, Teta noted. “It’s rooted in multiple forces, including prices that are getting too expensive in some areas for average workers to afford, homeowners who have very little equity because they started off with low down payments and foreclosure levels that already are relatively high,” he said. “When combined, those things can put any given housing markets in greater danger of a fall if the pandemic causes enough damage to the broader economy. It clearly hasn’t happened yet, and might not. But weak price affordability, relatively low homeowner equity and higher foreclosure rates suggest weaker foundations under markets from one place to another.”
In light of such forces, the three aforementioned states – New Jersey, Illinois and California – had 31 of the 50 counties most vulnerable to potential economic impact of the pandemic, according to ATTOM’s findings. “The 50 most at-risk included eight counties in the Chicago metropolitan area, an equal number near New York City, and seven sprinkled throughout northern, central and southern California, the report showed.
Elsewhere, the rest of the top 50 counties were scattered mainly along the East Coast, including two of Delaware’s three counties and another three in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the data showed. Outside of California, no other western counties made the top 50 list during the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the findings. Quite the contrary: the West region again had the highest concentration of markets considered least vulnerable to pandemic-related damage, the findings indicate.
The study revealed that disparities in pandemic-related risks to housing markets across the country remained in place during the fourth quarter of last year, even as a decade-long boom in the broader US market continued. Figures show that prices climbed more than 10 % in most of the nation last year – because of, and in spite of, the ongoing pandemic that slowed or idled major economic sectors in 2020.
“Throughout the past year, a surge of buyers has flooded the housing market amid a combination of historically low home-mortgage rates and a desire by many to trade congested virus-prone areas for the perceived safety and larger space offered by a house or condominium,” the report reads. “As they have chased a tight supply of homes choked further by the pandemic, prices have soared.”
Yet signs of a possible market slowdown have emerged in the form of declining home affordability, slumping investor profits and rising inflation, the report found. The specter of the pandemic also remains a threat as a third wave of infections surges across the country given the Omicron variant of the virus.
“With that danger still looming, the risk of a downturn remained higher in the fourth quarter of 2021 in counties with some combination of three warning signs: Housing that is unaffordable for average workers, higher levels of foreclosures and larger portions of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages,” the report reads.
The most vulnerable counties named
Eight counties in Chicago and its suburbs made the top 50 list. They were: Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will.
An equal number of most-vulnerable counties were found in the New York City metropolitan area, primarily in neighboring New Jersey where Bergen, Essex, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Ocean, Passaic and Sussex were found to be highly susceptible. Also in New Jersey, but counted as part of the Philadelphia region, were Burlington, Camden and Gloucester among the at-risk areas. Rockland County in New York also made the list.
California also figured prominently, with seven counties in the top 50 list: Butte County (Chico), El Dorado County (east of Sacramento), Humboldt County (Eureka) and Shasta County (Redding) in the northern part of the state; as well as Kern County (Bakersfield), Madera County (outside Fresno) and Riverside County (east of Los Angeles) in the central and southern sections of the state.
Florida posted three among the top 50: Bay County (Panama City), Flagler County (Palm Coast) and Lake County (outside Orlando).
Foreclosures abound after moratorium is lifted
The report found that more than one in 1,500 residential properties faced a foreclosure action in the fourth quarter of 2021 in 36 of the 50 most at-risk counties. Nationwide, one in 2,446 homes were in that position, the data showed. Foreclosure actions have risen over the past few months since the July 31 end of a federal moratorium on lenders taking back properties from homeowners who fell behind on their mortgages during the virus pandemic. The highest rates of post-moratorium foreclosures in the top 50 counties were in Saint Clair County, Illinois outside St. Louis, Missouri, where one in 121 residential properties faced possible foreclosure; Camden County, New Jersey, (o
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