The 2026 Indiana Foreclosure Risk Index
Where financial pressure on Indiana homeowners is building, county by county
Published on September 28th, 2026, by John Carter | Founder, NestCashOriginal NestCash research, free to read and cite.
Abstract
Indiana had the worst foreclosure rate of any state in the first quarter of 2026, one filing for every 739 housing units. Over the full first half it recorded 7,408 filings, one for every 402 housing units, the third-highest rate in the nation and up 38 percent from the first half of 2025 (ATTOM Data Solutions). During the last housing crisis, Indiana ranked 18th.
Indiana was not one of the crisis states, and it is now near the top of the table. The pressure behind that rise is not spread evenly across the state.
We built a county-level Foreclosure Risk Index from four public datasets to see where it sits. Lake County, on the Chicago side of the state, and Marion County, home to Indianapolis, tie at the top of the index at 67.2. Grant County, a small industrial county between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, is a fraction of a point behind. At the other end, Allen County (Fort Wayne), St. Joseph County (South Bend), and the suburban counties north and west of Indianapolis all grade Lower.
This report explains how the index is built, publishes every county score, and states its limits plainly, including where the index and actual filing counts disagree.
We score each county from 0 to 100 by blending four public signals, each weighted by how directly it bears on a mortgaged homeowner: market softness (35 percent), mortgage cost burden (30 percent), 90-day mortgage delinquency (20 percent), and unemployment (15 percent). Each signal is min-max normalized within Indiana, so the score ranks counties against one another in the state, not against a national or absolute standard. A county grades Elevated at 50 or above, Moderate from 44 to 49.9, and Lower below 44. One rule keeps the ranking honest: we rank the 58 counties with at least 12,000 housing units. Indiana has 92 counties, and the other 34 have too few homes for sale to score a market reliably, so they stay in the data but are not ranked. The 58 ranked counties hold 90.9 percent of the state’s homes. The full weighting, the normalization, and the limits of the data are spelled out in the methodology section below.
Key findings
- Indiana has spent 2026 near the top of the national table. It had the highest state foreclosure rate in the first quarter, the fourth highest in the second, and the third highest over the first half, with filings up 38 percent from a year earlier against a national increase of 21 percent. Of the ten states with the worst first-half rates, Indiana posted the largest year-over-year increase (ATTOM Data Solutions).
- The pace has eased since spring. Indiana ranked sixth in August 2026, one filing for every 2,535 housing units. It remains in the top six, but the first-quarter surge has not continued.
- Indianapolis and Lake County tie at the top of the index. Marion County and Lake County both score 67.2. Marion has the third-highest share of price-cut listings of any ranked county, 31.0 percent. Lake has the second-highest published delinquency rate in the state, 1.5 percent. Together they hold 22 percent of Indiana’s homes.
- Indiana’s cities split in two. Indianapolis, Lake County, and Evansville (Vanderburgh County, 10th) grade Elevated. Fort Wayne (Allen County, 47th) and South Bend (St. Joseph County, 37th) grade Lower, and so does Hamilton County, north of Indianapolis, which has the lowest delinquency rate the CFPB reports anywhere in Indiana, 0.4 percent.
- Today’s filings are about a third of the crisis level. Indiana recorded roughly 45,900 filings in 2008, the highest of the crisis years we could verify. At the first-half pace, 2026 will finish near 14,800. The ranking has risen much further than the volume has.
- Actual filings partly confirm the index. ATTOM’s August 2026 state ranking named Madison, Clinton, Grant, and Huntington as the Indiana counties with the worst foreclosure rates that month. Grant ranks third in our index and Madison 12th, both Elevated. Clinton and Huntington grade Lower. We explain the difference below.
Methodology
Data and sources
We built the index entirely from public and openly licensed data, and we cite each source at the point of use. Market conditions come from Realtor.com Economic Research (county listing data through August 2026). Housing tenure, mortgage status, cost burden, county housing counts, and unemployment come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey five-year estimates (2020 to 2024). Mortgage delinquency comes from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Mortgage Performance Trends (latest data December 2025). Statewide filing counts, national ranks, and trends come from ATTOM Data Solutions’ published foreclosure market reports. Every dataset we used is free and publicly available.
Building the index
The Indiana Foreclosure Risk Index uses the same formula as every state in this series, a weighted blend of four signals, each chosen because it precedes or predicts foreclosure among homeowners who carry a mortgage:
35%
The share of active listings with a price cut and the median days a home sits on the market. A soft market matters because a homeowner in trouble who cannot sell quickly has fewer ways to avoid foreclosure.
30%
The share of owners with a mortgage who spend more than 30 percent of household income on housing. This is direct payment stress on the exact population that can be foreclosed on.
20%
The 90-day-or-more delinquency rate, the clearest early warning that foreclosures are coming. See the note on Indiana’s delinquency data below.
15%
A secondary driver. We hold its weight down deliberately, because unemployment also captures renters and therefore dilutes a signal meant to describe homeowners.
We normalized each signal across the ranking-eligible counties on a 0-to-1 scale, where 0 is the lowest value in that set and 1 is the highest, then applied the weights above and multiplied by 100. The result is a relative score: it ranks Indiana counties against one another, not against a national or absolute standard. We then graded each county by its score, Elevated for 50.0 or above, Moderate for 44.0 to 49.9, and Lower for anything below 44.0. Twenty-three counties land in the Elevated tier, 11 in Moderate, and 24 in Lower.
Indiana has 92 counties. We limited the ranking to counties with at least 12,000 housing units, the same floor we use across this series, because price-cut shares and days-on-market figures drawn from a small number of listings are too noisy to rank. That leaves 58 ranked counties, which together hold 90.9 percent of the state’s housing. The other 34 are shown in gray on the map and listed below the table, with no score or rank. Counties that tie at the published one-decimal score share a rank.
A note on Indiana’s delinquency data
The CFPB publishes a county’s delinquency rate only when the county has enough mortgages in its sample, and 12 Indiana counties qualify. They range from 0.4 percent in Hamilton County to 2.1 percent in Clark County. For the other 46 ranked counties we used the Indiana statewide rate of 1.0 percent. Because the index rescales each indicator across the ranked counties, that substitution matters, so we tested it.
With delinquency removed and the other three signals reweighted, Grant County moves to first (74.4) and Marion County is second (72.3). Lake County falls to sixth, which tells us its share of the top spot depends on its published 1.5 percent delinquency rate. Five counties change grade: Clark County falls from Elevated to Moderate, Delaware and Wabash counties rise from Moderate to Elevated, and St. Joseph and Tippecanoe counties rise from Lower to Moderate. Every other county keeps its grade. We treat those five grades as less certain than the rest.
Other limitations
First, the index is relative. A Lower grade means lower risk than other Indiana counties, not low risk in absolute terms, and Indiana as a whole has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country this year. Second, the index measures leading pressure, not completed foreclosures or filings, so it will not match any single month’s filing counts. Where our scores and realized filings disagree, we say so rather than force a match. Third, several of the smaller ranked counties had few active listings in August 2026 (Adams County had 31, Wells County 35), so their market-softness figures carry more noise than the metros’.
Findings
The index: two cities at the top
Ranked from most to least risk, the index puts Indiana’s largest county and its second largest level with each other.
Marion County holds 441,040 housing units, 14.8 percent of the state’s total, and it scores 67.2. Its housing market is the main reason. Thirty-one percent of its active listings carried a price cut in August 2026, the third-highest share of any ranked county, and the typical home sat 54 days. Its mortgaged owners carry a 23.0 percent cost burden, above the statewide 20.1 percent, and its 1.2 percent serious delinquency rate is the fourth highest of the 12 the CFPB publishes for Indiana.
Lake County reaches the same score by a different route. Its market is not especially soft: 21.7 percent of its listings carried a cut, below the median of 24.2 percent across ranked counties. What sets it apart is household strain: a 23.6 percent cost burden, a 6.1 percent unemployment rate, and a 1.5 percent delinquency rate, second only to Clark County among the published rates. The two counties together hold 22 percent of Indiana’s homes, and Elevated counties overall hold 46.7 percent.
Northwest Indiana
Lake County does not stand alone in the northwest. Porter County (53.5) and LaPorte County (52.3), its neighbors along Lake Michigan, also grade Elevated, so the whole corner of the state closest to Chicago sits in the top tier. The Illinois side of that metro area shows the same pattern: Cook County grades Elevated in our Illinois index.
East-central Indiana
The other concentration is a band of smaller industrial counties north and east of Indianapolis. Grant County, whose seat is the city of Marion, scores 66.6, a fraction of a point behind the two leaders. Its mortgaged owners carry a 26.3 percent cost burden, the highest of any ranked county, and its unemployment rate of 6.3 percent is the third highest. Miami County (63.4) is fourth. Madison County, home to Anderson, scores 56.9 with 32.2 percent of its listings cut, the second-highest share in the state, and Henry County (51.5), home to New Castle, has the highest share at 33.1 percent.
This is also where ATTOM’s filing data and our index agree most clearly. Madison and Grant were two of the four Indiana counties ATTOM named for the worst foreclosure rates in August 2026. Grant also ranks first in our index when delinquency is removed, so its position does not depend on the statewide substitute.
Fort Wayne, South Bend, and the Indianapolis suburbs
Indiana’s other large counties tell a different story. Allen County, home to Fort Wayne and the state’s third-largest county by housing, scores 36.1 and ranks 47th. Its owners carry a 17.7 percent cost burden, and homes sell in a median of 41 days. The two lowest-scoring counties in the index, Wells (17.7) and Whitley (21.8), border Allen County, and they have the two fastest markets in the state, with median times on market of 29 and 30 days. The Fort Wayne area is the strongest cluster in the index.
St. Joseph County, home to South Bend, grades Lower at 40.9, and Tippecanoe County, home to Lafayette and Purdue University, grades Lower at 39.2. Both rise to Moderate when delinquency is removed.
Around Indianapolis the suburbs divide by direction. Hamilton County (29.3), Hendricks County (30.8), Boone County (36.0), and Hancock County (39.0), to the north, west, and east, all grade Lower. Hamilton has the lowest delinquency rate the CFPB publishes for any Indiana county, 0.4 percent. Johnson County to the south grades Elevated at 50.8, with a 1.3 percent delinquency rate, and it stays just above the Elevated line when delinquency is removed.
Southern Indiana
Vanderburgh County, home to Evansville, grades Elevated at 57.1 and ranks 10th, with a 23.5 percent cost burden. Monroe County, home to Bloomington and Indiana University, grades Elevated at 57.6, largely because its homes sit longest on the market of any ranked county, a median of 68 days. Some of that slowness likely reflects a housing market shaped by the university, and we would not read Monroe’s score as the same kind of household strain seen in Grant or Lake.
Clark County, on the Indiana side of the Louisville metro, has the highest published delinquency rate in the state, 2.1 percent, and grades Elevated at 56.3. Its cost burden is lower than the state average, and without the delinquency input it falls to Moderate.
Where the index and the filings disagree
ATTOM’s August 2026 list also named Clinton and Huntington counties, which grade Lower in our index at 28.7 and 38.7. The two measures answer different questions. ATTOM counts foreclosure filings recorded in a single month, and in a county of 13,000 to 16,000 homes a small number of filings can produce a high one-month rate. Our index measures the underlying conditions that tend to precede filings: market softness, payment strain, delinquency, and unemployment. Clinton’s owners carry the third-lowest cost burden of any ranked county, 15.3 percent, and its unemployment rate is 2.6 percent. If filings there stay high in the coming quarters while conditions stay mild, that would be worth examining, and we will report it.
How today compares with the last crisis
Indiana was not a center of the 2007 to 2011 foreclosure crisis. In 2009, when the national count was near its peak, 41,405 Indiana properties received a foreclosure filing, one for every 67 housing units, which ranked Indiana 18th among the states by rate, according to RealtyTrac’s year-end report. Using the changes RealtyTrac published for 2009, Indiana recorded roughly 45,900 filings in 2008 and roughly 28,000 in 2007, so its count was already falling in 2009 while the national count was still rising. We could not find Indiana’s 2010 and 2011 totals in a source we could verify, so the chart shows the three crisis years we could confirm.
At the first-half pace of 7,408 filings, Indiana is on track for roughly 14,800 in 2026, about a third of its 2008 total and about half of its 2007 total. August’s 1,174 filings point to a similar annual figure. So Indiana’s volume remains well below crisis levels, but the gap is much narrower than in Nevada, Arizona, Florida, or Michigan, the states at the center of the crisis, and Indiana’s rank today is far higher than it was then. A filing marks the start of the legal process, not a completed foreclosure, and RealtyTrac’s 2009 data covered fewer counties than ATTOM’s data does today, so the comparison is approximate.
If you are an Indiana homeowner facing foreclosure
This report is a market analysis, not legal advice, but the data points to a few things worth knowing. Indiana foreclosures go through the courts. Before a lender can file a foreclosure case on your home, Indiana law requires it to send you a pre-suit notice at least 30 days in advance, on a form prescribed by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority (Indiana Code 32-30-10.5).
Once a case is filed, you have the right to request a settlement conference, a meeting with your lender’s attorney at the courthouse to try to agree on an alternative to foreclosure. The notice of that right appears on the first page of the court summons, and the summons tells you how to request the conference. If you request one, the court sets it 40 to 60 days out, and you must send your loss mitigation package, the financial documents your lender needs to review your options, at least 30 days before the conference date. If you and your lender reach an agreement, the foreclosure is dismissed or paused for as long as you keep to its terms.
Free help is available. The Indiana Foreclosure Prevention Network, run by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority, connects homeowners with free foreclosure counselors at 1-877-GET-HOPE (877-438-4673). You can also find a HUD-approved housing counselor through the CFPB’s housing counselor search. Acting early matters. Read every notice the day it arrives, since the settlement conference has to be requested, and a foreclosure can stay on a credit report for up to seven years.
The full data
All 58 ranked counties, from highest to lowest Foreclosure Risk Index. Counties that tie at the published score share a rank. An asterisk on the delinquency rate marks a county where the Indiana statewide rate was substituted because the county’s own rate is not separately reported. See the methodology note on delinquency data.
| Rank | County | FRI | Grade | Price cuts | Median DOM | Cost burden | 90+ delinq | Unemployment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake | 67.2 | Elevated | 21.7% | 52 | 23.6% | 1.5% | 6.1% |
| 1 | Marion | 67.2 | Elevated | 31.0% | 54 | 23.0% | 1.2% | 5.0% |
| 3 | Grant | 66.6 | Elevated | 26.4% | 39 | 26.3% | 1.0*% | 6.3% |
| 4 | Miami | 63.4 | Elevated | 30.8% | 51 | 21.4% | 1.0*% | 6.6% |
| 5 | Steuben | 63.2 | Elevated | 24.3% | 59 | 21.2% | 1.0*% | 7.2% |
| 6 | Greene | 62.3 | Elevated | 19.1% | 66 | 22.4% | 1.0*% | 6.0% |
| 7 | LaGrange | 60.3 | Elevated | 22.0% | 58 | 24.0% | 1.0*% | 4.2% |
| 8 | Ripley | 59.9 | Elevated | 25.3% | 51 | 25.3% | 1.0*% | 3.0% |
| 9 | Monroe | 57.6 | Elevated | 21.3% | 68 | 20.1% | 1.0*% | 5.5% |
| 10 | Vanderburgh | 57.1 | Elevated | 25.1% | 51 | 23.5% | 0.9% | 4.2% |
| 11 | Adams | 57.0 | Elevated | 24.1% | 53 | 24.4% | 1.0*% | 2.8% |
| 12 | Madison | 56.9 | Elevated | 32.2% | 52 | 19.0% | 1.0*% | 5.9% |
| 12 | Jefferson | 56.9 | Elevated | 21.3% | 67 | 21.1% | 1.0*% | 4.4% |
| 14 | Clark | 56.3 | Elevated | 25.0% | 51 | 18.0% | 2.1% | 4.0% |
| 15 | White | 56.2 | Elevated | 30.3% | 58 | 20.7% | 1.0*% | 3.5% |
| 16 | Shelby | 55.1 | Elevated | 23.8% | 44 | 24.5% | 1.0*% | 3.6% |
| 17 | Vigo | 54.2 | Elevated | 21.4% | 44 | 22.7% | 1.0*% | 5.7% |
| 18 | Porter | 53.5 | Elevated | 22.1% | 53 | 21.7% | 1.0% | 4.7% |
| 19 | LaPorte | 52.3 | Elevated | 20.2% | 57 | 21.0% | 1.0*% | 4.8% |
| 20 | Henry | 51.5 | Elevated | 33.1% | 48 | 19.6% | 1.0*% | 3.7% |
| 21 | Wayne | 50.9 | Elevated | 17.9% | 53 | 21.2% | 1.0*% | 5.4% |
| 22 | Johnson | 50.8 | Elevated | 28.2% | 52 | 19.4% | 1.3% | 3.0% |
| 23 | Washington | 50.5 | Elevated | 20.1% | 52 | 22.8% | 1.0*% | 3.2% |
| 24 | Wabash | 49.0 | Moderate | 27.1% | 45 | 21.2% | 1.0*% | 3.4% |
| 25 | Delaware | 47.4 | Moderate | 26.0% | 47 | 18.1% | 1.0*% | 5.8% |
| 26 | Jasper | 47.0 | Moderate | 23.2% | 40 | 20.9% | 1.0*% | 4.9% |
| 27 | Cass | 46.7 | Moderate | 23.5% | 44 | 20.3% | 1.0*% | 4.6% |
| 28 | Elkhart | 46.1 | Moderate | 21.8% | 39 | 22.0% | 1.1% | 3.6% |
| 29 | Howard | 46.0 | Moderate | 30.0% | 43 | 17.1% | 1.0*% | 5.8% |
| 30 | Warrick | 45.8 | Moderate | 25.7% | 53 | 19.3% | 1.0*% | 3.1% |
| 31 | Jackson | 45.7 | Moderate | 30.0% | 65 | 16.4% | 1.0*% | 2.6% |
| 32 | Kosciusko | 45.3 | Moderate | 28.2% | 50 | 19.2% | 1.0*% | 2.8% |
| 33 | Lawrence | 44.9 | Moderate | 24.8% | 49 | 19.5% | 1.0*% | 3.5% |
| 34 | Floyd | 44.1 | Moderate | 28.6% | 50 | 17.3% | 1.0*% | 4.1% |
| 35 | Noble | 42.1 | Lower | 18.9% | 40 | 22.0% | 1.0*% | 3.2% |
| 36 | Daviess | 41.0 | Lower | 22.1% | 67 | 17.7% | 1.0*% | 1.5% |
| 37 | St. Joseph | 40.9 | Lower | 24.9% | 42 | 18.3% | 0.8% | 5.2% |
| 38 | Dearborn | 40.5 | Lower | 25.8% | 45 | 19.8% | 1.0*% | 1.9% |
| 39 | Morgan | 40.1 | Lower | 24.3% | 46 | 17.6% | 1.0*% | 4.2% |
| 40 | Putnam | 39.8 | Lower | 27.9% | 52 | 16.5% | 1.0*% | 3.1% |
| 41 | Tippecanoe | 39.2 | Lower | 25.1% | 43 | 19.8% | 0.7% | 3.3% |
| 42 | Hancock | 39.0 | Lower | 25.2% | 52 | 17.4% | 1.0*% | 2.7% |
| 43 | Huntington | 38.7 | Lower | 24.8% | 38 | 19.0% | 1.0*% | 3.5% |
| 44 | Marshall | 38.2 | Lower | 21.2% | 46 | 19.4% | 1.0*% | 2.6% |
| 45 | DeKalb | 37.8 | Lower | 19.7% | 37 | 19.3% | 1.0*% | 4.5% |
| 46 | Bartholomew | 36.6 | Lower | 29.5% | 45 | 15.0% | 1.0*% | 4.1% |
| 47 | Allen | 36.1 | Lower | 23.0% | 41 | 17.7% | 0.8% | 4.7% |
| 48 | Boone | 36.0 | Lower | 22.0% | 50 | 17.4% | 1.0*% | 2.8% |
| 49 | Harrison | 33.9 | Lower | 11.1% | 51 | 18.9% | 1.0*% | 3.5% |
| 50 | Dubois | 32.8 | Lower | 18.8% | 45 | 18.5% | 1.0*% | 2.3% |
| 51 | Montgomery | 32.5 | Lower | 22.6% | 43 | 16.6% | 1.0*% | 3.3% |
| 52 | Gibson | 31.1 | Lower | 22.9% | 44 | 16.8% | 1.0*% | 2.3% |
| 53 | Hendricks | 30.8 | Lower | 26.4% | 43 | 16.9% | 0.7% | 2.6% |
| 54 | Hamilton | 29.3 | Lower | 26.4% | 44 | 17.3% | 0.4% | 2.8% |
| 55 | Knox | 28.8 | Lower | 18.3% | 54 | 14.7% | 1.0*% | 3.1% |
| 56 | Clinton | 28.7 | Lower | 18.5% | 53 | 15.3% | 1.0*% | 2.6% |
| 57 | Whitley | 21.8 | Lower | 14.8% | 30 | 17.0% | 1.0*% | 3.3% |
| 58 | Wells | 17.7 | Lower | 10.0% | 29 | 17.7% | 1.0*% | 2.6% |
Thirty-four counties are not ranked because they fall below the 12,000-housing-unit floor: Benton, Blackford, Brown, Carroll, Clay, Crawford, Decatur, Fayette, Fountain, Franklin, Fulton, Jay, Jennings, Martin, Newton, Ohio, Orange, Owen, Parke, Perry, Pike, Posey, Pulaski, Randolph, Rush, Scott, Spencer, Starke, Sullivan, Switzerland, Tipton, Union, Vermillion, and Warren.
What we will watch
We plan to update this index quarterly, beginning with the first quarter of 2027. Three things will tell us where Indiana goes from here: whether Indiana returns to the top of the monthly state rankings or keeps easing, as it did between spring and August; whether Marion County’s 31.0 percent price-cut share keeps rising, since a softening Indianapolis market would reduce homeowners’ options for selling their way out; and whether filings in Clinton and Huntington counties stay high, which would test whether our index is missing something in smaller counties.
Sources and data
- Foreclosure activity and trend. ATTOM Data Solutions, 2026 Mid-Year U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, Q1 2026 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, and U.S. Foreclosure Rates by State, August 2026 (published September 18, 2026). Used for statewide filing counts, national ranks, the year-over-year change, and the counties with the worst August filing rates.
- Housing market softness. Realtor.com Economic Research, county inventory core metrics through August 2026. Used for the price-cut share, median days on market, and active listing counts.
- Housing, mortgage status, cost burden, and unemployment. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimates, 2020 to 2024. Used for county housing counts, the mortgaged-owner universe, housing cost burden, and the unemployment rate.
- Mortgage delinquency. CFPB Mortgage Performance Trends, data through December 2025. Used for the 90-or-more day delinquency rates.
- Historical foreclosure rates. RealtyTrac, 2009 Year-End Foreclosure Market Report (via the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission archive). Used for Indiana’s 2009 filing count and national rank. The 2007 and 2008 figures in the history chart are derived from the report’s published changes from those years, and 2026 is a full-year projection from first-half filings.
- Foreclosure process. Indiana Code 32-30-10.5 and the Indiana Foreclosure Prevention Network. Used for the pre-suit notice and settlement conference rules.
About NestCash
NestCash buys houses for cash in twelve states and publishes original housing and distressed-property research across U.S. markets. Our original housing research helps homeowners, buyers, and investors understand local market conditions. This report may be cited and its charts embedded with attribution to NestCash.
John is the Founder of NestCash and a leading voice in real estate investing and housing market strategy. With experience across 12 states, he helps buyers, sellers, and investors make smarter decisions using real-world insight and market data.