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% while less than 3% 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.''
