The Toledo, Ohio, home foreclosure rate continues to drop, as the market approaches normalcy after being battered during the economic crisis.
For the first half of the year, 1,264 properties were in the foreclosure process, a 16% reduction from the same time in 2016, when 1,506 housing units were in some stage of foreclosure, according to Attom Data Solutions, a California real estate data firm.
Yet the metro Toledo market continues to lag behind much of the country, with the 38th highest foreclosure rate of the 217 metropolitan statistical areas counted by Attom.
The process includes default notices, notices of trustee's and sheriff's sales, and real estate-owned properties that have been foreclosed upon then repurchased by a bank. The Toledo metro area includes Lucas, Wood and Fulton counties.
Daren Blomquist, Attom senior vice president, said the Toledo area is on pace to end 2017 with less than 1% of homes in foreclosure; that's a mark that indicates a community is at normal levels within the market. At the peak of the housing crisis in 2008, almost 3% of all housing units were in foreclosure.
Nationwide, foreclosures dropped by 20% in the first six months of 2017 compared to the prior year. Some communities, such as the Silicon Valley area of California, have about 0.1% of homes in foreclosure, an indication of a nearly overheated housing market. Toledo has improved, but things aren't booming.
"Toledo has been one of those markets that hasn't benefited as much as from economic recovery and housing recovery that we've seen over the past few years," Mr. Blomquist said.
Within the Toledo area, Wood County improved the most from 2016, with its midyear foreclosure number dropping from 189 to 99 in 2017, a 47% reduction. Lucas County decreased from 1,254 to 1,110.
Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp said the decrease in foreclosures in the Toledo area has reduced stress for his office's civil division, which conducts sheriff's sales of foreclosed homes and serves court orders.
The division was understaffed at the height of the foreclosure crisis and could use more employees now, but the reduced workload has allowed the division to somewhat catch up, he said.
"The work load was heavy; we were behind but we got through it," Sheriff Tharp said. "Then it started slowing down and it's manageable now."
