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Tampa Bay’s ‘zombie’ foreclosure rate still above the national average

The bay area has almost a third of all vacant zombie homes in Florida.
 
As the foreclosure rate has dropped, so has the number of vacant 'zombie' homes.
As the foreclosure rate has dropped, so has the number of vacant 'zombie' homes. [ DAVID ZALUBOWSKI | AP ]
Published Oct. 31, 2019

Years after the foreclosure crisis ended, the Tampa Bay area still has 305 "zombies'' — vacant homes in some stage of foreclosure. That is almost a third of all zombie homes in Florida, which trails only New York in the total number of zombies, according to the real estate company ATTOM Data Solutions..

Tampa Bay’s zombie foreclosure rate is 5.6 percent while less than 3 percent of vacant homes in foreclosure nationwide are zombie properties. "One of the most visible signs of the housing market crash during the Great Recession keeps receding into the past,''said Todd Teta, ATTOM’s chief product officer. "Neighborhoods throughout the country are confronting fewer and fewer of the empty, decaying properties that were symbolic of the crash.''