In Florida, and across the country, many homeowners faced with a foreclosure notice pack up and just desert the home under the assumption that the bank will take over the property and sell it to someone else. However, after the 2008 real estate crash, many banks were confronted with thousands of vacant homes that were left to languish while the title remained in the vacated homeowner’s name. This led to the term “zombie foreclosure” joining common parlance in the real estate world.
According to the Q2 2015 Zombie Foreclosure Report released by RealtyTrac, the nation’s leading source for comprehensive housing data, over 127,000 homes actively in the foreclosure process were vacated by homeowners prior to a completed foreclosure. This represents 24 percent of all active foreclosures. Among all states, Florida came in at the second highest in zombie foreclosures with one in every 324 housing units, surpassed only by New Jersey’s one in every 210 housing units. Florida was closely followed by New York which had one in every 476 housing units, Nevada’s one in every 495 housing units, and Indiana’s one in every 574 housing units.