‘Zombie’ Properties Lay Low as Foreclosures Rise

ATTOM, a real estate analytics company, has released its third quarter 2025 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, analyzing foreclosure, equity and owner-occupancy status compared to monthly updated vacancy data.

In the third quarter of 2025, 222,318 homes were in the process of foreclosure. Of those pre-foreclosure homes, 7,519 or 3.38% were “zombie” properties, or homes that were abandoned by the owner midway through the process.

That is up only slightly from 3.14% a year ago, while overall foreclosures are sharply higher amid general economic uncertainty and strain.

“While there remain some markets with worryingly high rates of vacancies, as a whole it appears that the nation’s buyers are quickly filling homes that become available,” said ATTOM CEO Rob Barber.

“Zombie” properties peaked after the Great Recession, with separate estimates of 150,000 zombies across the country in 2013. These types of situations often create blight and weigh on neighborhood home values.

According to ATTOM, the national vacancy rate has been generally consistent at around 1.3%, or almost 1.4 million homes, for three and a half years. Southern and Midwestern states have reported the highest number of unoccupied homes, with Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, Missouri and West Virginia bearing the brunt of the issue.

The lowest vacancy rates are concentrated primarily in the Northeast, with unoccupied homes filling quickly in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut and Idaho as the one outlier.

Quarter-over-quarter, the number of zombie properties rose in 23 states, though the increase was minimal. However, since last year, the number of zombie properties have been doubling, or close to it, in states like Colorado, Washington, Iowa, North Carolina and Oklahoma—while Georgia, New Jersey, Illinois and New York have experienced a year-over-year decrease in zombie homes.

Of the 135 metropolitan areas ATTOM examined data from, more than half of those areas showed zombie foreclosure rates lower than the national average.

It’s also important to note that many of these vacant and zombie homes are likely to be investor-owned properties. Of 24.9 million investor-owned homes, about 3.6% of them were reported to be vacant this quarter, specifically in states like Indiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, Alabama and Ohio.

While Barber acknowledges the problem, he did not express significant concern about the data.

“While we’ve seen the rate of zombie homes tick up a tiny bit this quarter, the overall rate of vacant homes and homes in the foreclosure process has remained remarkably steady,” he said.