ATTOM's mid-year report landed in July, and the numbers got people talking. Across January through June of 2026, national foreclosure filings hit 227,548, up 21% from the same six months last year and 28% over two years. Foreclosure starts climbed 18% to 164,566. Bank repossessions jumped 33% to 27,983.
Those are big percentage moves. They're also measured against post-pandemic lows, which is the context that tends to fall out of the headline. We've been watching this play out county by county across Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, and the picture is messier than "foreclosures are surging, go buy stuff." The three states are not even the same product: Florida HOA foreclosures leave the first mortgage in place, and Pennsylvania sales run on their own deposit and deadline rules.
Florida: the worst foreclosure rate in the country
Florida recorded 27,494 foreclosure filings in the first six months of 2026, up 32.65% year over year and 36.85% over two years. The state's foreclosure rate hit 0.27%, roughly one in every 373 housing units. Worst in the nation.
The metro numbers are just as stark. Lakeland leads every U.S. metro at 0.48%. Cape Coral sits at 0.35%, Jacksonville at 0.31%. These aren't fringe markets. A lot of investor capital has flowed into all three over the past five years.
For auction buyers, more filings eventually mean more properties on the foreclosure auction docket, which in Florida is run by the Clerk of the Circuit Court rather than the sheriff. But "eventually" is doing real work in that sentence. Florida's judicial process takes time, and the path from filing to auction isn't a straight line. What we're seeing right now is a fatter top of funnel. The auction inventory itself shows up over the next 6 to 12 months.
Ohio: Cleveland climbing the metro rankings
Ohio recorded 10,698 filings over the same six months, up 23.60% year over year. The statewide foreclosure rate is 0.20%, eighth worst nationally. Cleveland's metro rate of 0.33% puts it fourth among all U.S. metros.
We track all 88 Ohio counties, and the pattern isn't uniform. Franklin County is seeing a steady climb in early-stage distress. Cuyahoga is still the volume leader. Some of the sharpest percentage increases, though, are in mid-size counties where the baseline was low enough that a handful of new filings moves the number a lot. Percentage growth off a small base isn't deal flow.
Ohio's sheriff sale process is faster than Florida's. Properties move from filing to auction more predictably, and the RealAuction online platform (state-mandated under ORC 2329.153) means you can bid from anywhere. Two-thirds of the appraised value is still the floor on a first sale, and deposits follow the statutory flat-dollar tiers under ORC 2329.211 rather than any percentage of your bid. Worth knowing: that two-thirds floor only binds the first sale. If a property doesn't sell, it goes back up within 7 to 30 days with no minimum at all, and that second sale is where a lot of the actual bargains live. If the inventory bump is what brings you to Ohio sheriff sales for the first time, those mechanics will decide your outcome long before the filing statistics do.
Pennsylvania: quiet growth, third most repossessions nationally
Pennsylvania filed 8,399 foreclosures over the first six months, a 19.63% increase. Smaller jump than Florida or Ohio. The repossession number tells a different story: 1,893 properties taken back by lenders, third highest in the country. When lenders are repossessing at that rate, the workout pipeline isn't absorbing the distress.
PA's sheriff sale process differs from Ohio's and Florida's in ways that catch investors crossing state lines. No valuation is published on PA sheriff sale listings at all, so you're bidding on your own numbers or nobody's. Deposit structures and timing rules get set county by county rather than statewide. With seven PA counties live on AuctionScout our coverage is still building, but what we have confirms what the forum threads say: PA investors work with far less information than their Ohio or Florida counterparts.
Normalization or crisis? Wrong question.
This is the debate filling investor forums right now, and both camps are partly right. The normalization argument is that filings are returning to pre-pandemic levels after years of suppressed activity from moratoriums, forbearance, and loss mitigation. The crisis argument points at specific metros where rates are climbing fast and asks what happens if the job market softens.
Neither answer changes what you do on Tuesday morning. We think the more useful question is what higher inventory actually changes about how you buy.
Start with timelines. The average foreclosure took 563 days in the second quarter of 2026, the shortest stretch since 2013. Properties are moving from filing to auction faster, which compresses your due diligence window and makes it less likely a lender negotiates a workout before sale day. If you're not checking new docket additions weekly, you'll miss properties that would have sat around for months a year ago.
More inventory also brings more buyers. Everyone reads the same ATTOM headlines you do. Nationally, auction buyers are paying about 67.6% of estimated market value. That's a real discount, but it isn't the 50-cents-on-the-dollar story first-timers show up expecting, and in competitive counties it shrinks further once you account for surviving liens (property taxes, municipal assessments, IRS federal tax liens that survive the sale and carry a 120-day redemption window) plus whatever maintenance got deferred during the foreclosure.
Here's the part that's easy to miss. When a county docket had 15 properties, you could research all of them over a weekend. At 40, you can't. You need a way to sort deal-quality properties from noise quickly, because inventory you can't evaluate isn't an advantage. It's just a longer list.
What to watch over the rest of 2026
The number we're watching closest is the conversion rate from filing to auction. A 21% increase in filings doesn't automatically produce a 21% increase in auction inventory. Some of those cases resolve through loan modifications, short sales, or deed-in-lieu agreements. Others stall in court for a year. Real homeowners sit on the other side of every one of these filings, and a meaningful share of the cases never reach a sale at all.
County data matters more than state data here. A statewide average hides the fact that one metro is surging while another is flat. We publish weekly county recaps across all 88 Ohio counties, 39 Florida counties, and 7 Pennsylvania counties for exactly that reason.
If you want to see where inventory is actually landing at auction instead of where filings are climbing, start with the recaps for the counties you buy in. Set alerts and let the properties come to you.
County recaps for all three states: auctionscout.app/counties. Setup takes about 30 seconds.