The 2026 New York Foreclosure Risk Index
Where financial pressure on New York homeowners is building, county by county
Published on October 10th, 2026, by John Carter | Founder, NestCashOriginal NestCash research, free to read and cite.
Abstract
New York’s foreclosure problem is less about how many homes enter foreclosure than about how long they stay there. In the first half of 2026 the state recorded 11,983 foreclosure filings, one for every 716 housing units, the 21st-highest rate in the country and slightly below the national rate. But homes that completed a foreclosure in New York in the second quarter of 2026 had been in the process for an average of 2,007 days, about five and a half years. That is more than three times the national average of 563 days and the third-longest timeline of any state (ATTOM Data Solutions).
We built a county-level Foreclosure Risk Index from four public datasets to see where the pressure on homeowners sits. Across the state, the answer is New York City’s outer boroughs. The Bronx ranks first by more than 13 points, with the highest unemployment in the state, and Queens and Brooklyn follow, carrying two of the three heaviest housing cost burdens in New York. Outside the city, the pressure is in the lower Hudson Valley: Rockland and Orange counties grade Elevated, and in a version of the index that scores the 55 counties outside the city on their own, Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, and Putnam lead. The upstate metros are the other side of the story. Monroe County, home to Rochester, has the lowest score in the state, and Erie, Onondaga, and Albany counties all rank near the bottom.
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 New York, 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 60 counties with at least 12,000 housing units. Hamilton and Schuyler counties have too few homes to score their markets reliably, so they stay in the data but are not ranked. Because New York City’s five boroughs sit at the extremes of several signals, we also publish a supplementary ranking of the 55 counties outside the city, and we tested the index five different ways. The full weighting, the normalization, and the limits of the data are spelled out in the methodology section below.
Key findings
- New York foreclosures are among the slowest in the country. Homes that completed a foreclosure in the second quarter of 2026 had spent an average of 2,007 days in the process, more than three times the national average of 563 days. Only Louisiana and Hawaii took longer (ATTOM Data Solutions). New York had the longest timeline of any state in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
- The Bronx is the finding that holds. It scores 73.9, more than 13 points clear of the next county, and ranks first in all five versions of the index we tested. Its unemployment rate is the highest in the state on both the Census five-year estimate, 11.4 percent, and the latest 12 months of federal data, 7.2 percent.
- Queens and Brooklyn carry the heaviest cost burdens. Queens (60.4) and Brooklyn (58.7) grade Elevated, with 48.3 and 45.8 percent of mortgaged owners spending more than 30 percent of income on housing, the highest and third-highest shares in New York. Their homes rarely carry a price cut, which makes their grades sensitive to how market softness is measured.
- Outside the city, the lower Hudson Valley leads. Orange County (53.5) grades Elevated in every version of the index and was among the four New York counties with the worst foreclosure filing rates in August 2026. Rockland County (53.8) is Elevated in four of five versions. Scored among the 55 counties outside the city, Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, and Putnam all grade Elevated.
- The upstate metros are the safest ground in the state. Monroe County, home to Rochester, has the lowest score in New York, 13.6, and the fastest market, a median of 27 days on market. Erie, Onondaga, and Albany counties all grade Lower in every version, including the outside-the-city ranking.
Methodology
Three limits to read first
We state these before the method because they shape how the New York results should be read.
New York City sits at the extremes. The five boroughs hold 42.8 percent of the state’s homes, and on several signals they are far from the rest of New York. Mortgaged owners in Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn carry housing cost burdens of 46 to 48 percent, against about 20 to 30 percent across most of upstate. Their homes take more than 70 days to sell, which in a market dominated by co-ops and condominiums may partly reflect building and lender approvals, not only weak demand. Yet their listings carry some of the smallest price-cut shares in the state, 8.0 percent in Brooklyn and 9.4 percent in Queens. Because the index scores each county against the state’s highest and lowest values, the boroughs stretch the scale and compress the differences among the other 55 counties. We kept the standard formula as the official ranking, the same way the Pennsylvania index ranks Philadelphia, and we also publish a supplementary ranking that scores the 55 counties outside the city against one another. It appears in its own section below and as the last column of the full data table.
Second-home counties. Median days on market is half of the market-softness input, and it is inflated in seasonal markets by camps, cabins, and lake houses that take longer to sell for reasons unrelated to household strain. Across this series we flag counties where seasonal homes are at least 5 percent of housing, a cutoff we set for Oklahoma at about three times that state’s share. In New York, seasonal homes are 3.5 percent of housing statewide but common across much of upstate, and the 5 percent cutoff would flag 31 of the 60 ranked counties, which would make the flag meaningless. We applied the same reasoning instead, three times New York’s statewide share, which sets the cutoff at 10.5 percent. That flags 17 counties across the Catskills, the Adirondacks, the North Country, and the Southern Tier, led by Greene (29.6 percent), Sullivan (28.7 percent), and Essex (28.2 percent). The next county below the line is Chautauqua, at 10.2 percent. The 17 are hatched on the map and marked with a dagger in the chart and table, the same treatment we gave second-home counties in our Maryland and Colorado indexes. Greene County, the most seasonal ranked county, falls from 44.8 to 34.1 when days on market is removed.
Delinquency data for 22 of 60 counties. The CFPB publishes a county’s 90-day delinquency rate only when the county has enough mortgages in its sample. In New York, 22 of the 60 ranked counties qualify, including all five boroughs and the large suburban and upstate metro counties. The other 38, mostly rural upstate counties, carry the statewide rate of 1.0 percent.
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 September 2026). Housing tenure, mortgage status, cost burden, seasonal homes, 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). Current county unemployment for the sensitivity test comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics. Statewide filing counts, national ranks, foreclosure timelines, and trends come from ATTOM Data Solutions’ published foreclosure market reports. Every dataset we used is free and publicly available.
Building the index
The New York 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. See the notes on New York City and second-home counties above.
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. Published for 22 of New York’s 60 ranked counties. See the note above.
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 60 ranked 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 New York 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. Six counties land in the Elevated tier, three in Moderate, and 51 in Lower. The six Elevated counties hold 35.1 percent of the state’s homes. Counties that tie at the published one-decimal score share a rank.
To test how much the results depend on any one input, we scored the counties five ways: the standard index; the standard index with current Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment, the 12 published months from August 2025 through August 2026, in place of the Census five-year estimate; the index with delinquency removed and its weight spread proportionally across the other three signals; the index with market softness measured by price cuts alone; and price cuts alone combined with current BLS unemployment. When we call a finding robust in this report, it holds in all five.
Other limitations
The index is relative. A Lower grade means lower measured risk than other New York counties, not low risk in absolute terms. It also measures leading pressure, not completed foreclosures or filings, so it will not match any single month’s filing counts. ATTOM named Cortland, Greene, Orange, and Tioga as the New York counties with the worst foreclosure filing rates in August 2026. Orange grades Elevated and Greene Moderate, but Cortland and Tioga grade Lower in every version of the index we ran, including the ranking outside the city, so the index offers no explanation for their filing rates. Several rural counties had fewer than 70 active listings in September 2026, among them Seneca (51), Orleans (53), Wyoming (58), Genesee (61), Livingston (63), and Yates (66), so their market-softness figures carry more noise than the larger counties’.
Findings
The index
Ranked from most to least risk on the standard formula. Read the daggered second-home counties and the New York City results with the limits above in mind.
The Bronx and the outer boroughs
The Bronx scores 73.9, 13.5 points ahead of the next county, and ranks first in every version of the index we tested. It does not depend on any single input. Its unemployment rate is the highest in New York on both measures we used, 11.4 percent on the Census five-year estimate and 7.2 percent over the latest 12 months of federal data. Its mortgaged owners carry a 47.4 percent housing cost burden, the second highest in the state, and its 1.3 percent delinquency rate is tied for the third highest among counties with published rates.
Queens ranks second at 60.4 and Brooklyn third at 58.7. Queens has the heaviest housing cost burden in New York, 48.3 percent of mortgaged owners, and Brooklyn the third heaviest, 45.8 percent. Both stay Elevated when current unemployment replaces the five-year estimate and when delinquency is removed. They are more sensitive to how market softness is measured, because so few of their listings carry a price cut: on price cuts alone, Queens stays Elevated at 51.8 and Brooklyn falls just below the line, to 49.7. Staten Island ranks sixth at 51.4 and grades Elevated in four of the five versions.
Manhattan is the exception among the boroughs. It ranks 32nd at 34.5, with the lowest published delinquency rate in the state, 0.4 percent.
Outside New York City: the lower Hudson Valley
Rockland County ranks fourth statewide at 53.8 and Orange County fifth at 53.5, both Elevated. Orange is one of the most consistent results in the report: it grades Elevated in all five versions of the index and ranks second when market softness is measured by price cuts alone, with an 18.0 percent price-cut share, the fourth highest in the state, and a published delinquency rate of 1.2 percent. ATTOM named Orange among the four New York counties with the worst foreclosure filing rates in August 2026. Rockland’s owners carry a 44.0 percent housing cost burden, the highest of any county outside the city.
When we score the 55 counties outside New York City against one another, the lower Hudson Valley leads the state:
| Rank outside NYC | County | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rockland | 61.1 | Elevated |
| 2 | Orange | 60.0 | Elevated |
| 3 | Sullivan † | 53.2 | Elevated |
| 4 | Putnam | 50.3 | Elevated |
| 5 | Delaware † | 49.6 | Moderate |
| 6 | Dutchess | 48.2 | Moderate |
| 7 | Columbia † | 48.0 | Moderate |
| 8 | Suffolk | 47.9 | Moderate |
| 9 | Otsego † | 46.4 | Moderate |
| 10 | Greene † | 46.2 | Moderate |
Sullivan County, in the Catskills, is the second most seasonal ranked county in the state, and on the statewide index its score falls from 48.2 to 42.8 when days on market is removed. Putnam County holds up better. On Long Island, Suffolk grades Moderate and Nassau ranks 11th outside the city at 46.0, also Moderate. Westchester ranks 19th outside the city and grades Lower. The outside-the-city rank for every county is in the last column of the full data table.
Upstate
The upstate metros are the strongest housing markets in New York by these measures. Monroe County, home to Rochester, has the lowest score in the state, 13.6, and the fastest market, a median of 27 days on market, with price cuts on only 4.9 percent of listings, the smallest share in the state. Erie County, home to Buffalo, scores 24.4, Onondaga County, home to Syracuse, 24.3, and Albany County 27.3. All four grade Lower in every version of the index, including the ranking outside the city. Saratoga County (18.8) has the lowest current unemployment rate in the state, 3.1 percent.
The risk upstate is scattered and smaller. Oneida County, home to Utica, has the highest published delinquency rate in New York, 1.8 percent, and ranks 21st statewide and 17th outside the city. Niagara County (1.5 percent) and Broome County, home to Binghamton (1.3 percent), have the next highest upstate rates. Clinton County, home to Plattsburgh, has the heaviest price cutting in the state, 26.7 percent of listings. Several Catskills and Adirondack counties, among them Greene, Essex, Delaware, and Schoharie, score in the 40s on the standard index, but they are second-home markets, and their scores fall when days on market is removed.
How long a New York foreclosure takes
New York was not a center of the last foreclosure crisis by rate. In 2009, 50,369 New York properties received a foreclosure filing, 0.63 percent of the state’s housing, against 2.21 percent nationally, which ranked New York 38th among the states (RealtyTrac). It ranks 21st by rate today. What sets New York apart is how long foreclosures take. Every foreclosure goes through the state Supreme Court, and in 2011, 2012, and 2013 New York had the longest average foreclosure timeline of any state, more than 1,000 days.
The national average has risen and fallen since then. New York’s has roughly doubled. Homes completing a foreclosure in New York at the end of 2024 had spent an average of 2,099 days in the process, and in the second quarter of 2026 the average was 2,007 days, against 563 days nationally (ATTOM Data Solutions). New York was not among the five longest states in 2017, 2018, or 2019, and its figure for those years was not published, so the chart leaves them blank.
A long timeline cuts both ways for a homeowner. It gives more time to catch up, sell, or negotiate, but interest, fees, and back taxes keep building while the case is open, which can erode the equity a homeowner would otherwise keep. ATTOM’s figure measures homes that completed a foreclosure, so it describes the cases that went the full distance, not the many that are resolved earlier.
If you are a New York homeowner facing foreclosure
This report is a market analysis, not legal advice, but the data points to a few things worth knowing. Before a lender can start a foreclosure case, it must mail you a 90-day pre-foreclosure notice that lists at least five nonprofit housing counseling agencies near you. Every foreclosure goes through the court, and once you are served with the summons and complaint you have 20 days to file an answer if the papers were handed to you in person, or 30 days if they were delivered any other way (New York State Courts).
If the home is where you live and has no more than four units, the court must hold a settlement conference within 60 days after the lender files proof of service, a chance to reach a settlement with your lender before the case goes further. You can stop the sale up until the auction by paying what is owed (New York State Courts).
Free help is available. The New York State Attorney General’s Homeowner Protection Program funds a statewide network of nonprofit legal services and housing counseling organizations that help homeowners at no cost, including representation at settlement conferences. You can reach it at 1-855-466-3456 or through homeownerhelpny.com. You can also find a HUD-approved counselor through the CFPB’s housing counselor search. Be wary of deed-theft scams, in which someone tricks a homeowner into signing over the deed. The Attorney General’s office received about 3,000 deed-theft complaints in New York City from 2014 to 2018, 45 percent of them from Brooklyn (New York State Attorney General).
The full data
All 60 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 New York statewide rate was substituted because the county’s own rate is not separately reported. A dagger marks a second-home county, where seasonal homes are 10.5 percent or more of housing and days on market partly reflect seasonal listings. Unemployment is the five-year Census estimate used in the index. The last column gives each county’s rank among the 55 counties outside New York City. See the limits at the start of the methodology.
| Rank | County | FRI | Grade | Price cuts | Median DOM | Cost burden | 90+ delinq | Unemployment | Rank outside NYC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bronx | 73.9 | Elevated | 11.4% | 72 | 47.4% | 1.3% | 11.4% | NYC |
| 2 | Queens | 60.4 | Elevated | 9.4% | 74 | 48.3% | 0.9% | 7.2% | NYC |
| 3 | Kings (Brooklyn) | 58.7 | Elevated | 8.0% | 71 | 45.8% | 1.0% | 7.9% | NYC |
| 4 | Rockland | 53.8 | Elevated | 13.6% | 58 | 44.0% | 1.0% | 5.6% | 1 |
| 5 | Orange | 53.5 | Elevated | 18.0% | 60 | 37.2% | 1.2% | 5.5% | 2 |
| 6 | Richmond (Staten Island) | 51.4 | Elevated | 12.4% | 59 | 42.4% | 1.0% | 5.6% | NYC |
| 7 | Sullivan † | 48.2 | Moderate | 17.4% | 86 | 28.1% | 1.0*% | 5.8% | 3 |
| 8 | Putnam | 46.4 | Moderate | 17.2% | 53 | 37.4% | 1.0*% | 4.4% | 4 |
| 9 | Greene † | 44.8 | Moderate | 13.4% | 94 | 29.2% | 1.0*% | 3.9% | 10 |
| 10 | Columbia † | 43.9 | Lower | 17.9% | 72 | 27.8% | 1.0*% | 5.4% | 7 |
| 11 | Essex † | 43.7 | Lower | 17.1% | 79 | 28.9% | 1.0*% | 4.0% | 14 |
| 12 | Dutchess | 43.5 | Lower | 16.5% | 55 | 31.8% | 1.1% | 5.2% | 6 |
| 12 | Delaware † | 43.5 | Lower | 13.5% | 75 | 28.3% | 1.0*% | 6.4% | 5 |
| 14 | Suffolk | 43.4 | Lower | 10.4% | 59 | 37.7% | 1.0% | 4.7% | 8 |
| 15 | Schoharie † | 42.9 | Lower | 17.6% | 79 | 26.0% | 1.0*% | 5.0% | 11 |
| 16 | Nassau | 41.7 | Lower | 11.2% | 58 | 38.3% | 0.8% | 4.8% | 11 |
| 17 | Ulster | 41.2 | Lower | 16.8% | 66 | 33.1% | 0.6% | 5.4% | 14 |
| 18 | Clinton | 40.8 | Lower | 26.7% | 64 | 22.2% | 1.0*% | 4.1% | 20 |
| 19 | Otsego † | 40.4 | Lower | 13.5% | 67 | 27.3% | 1.0*% | 6.4% | 9 |
| 20 | Chenango | 40.1 | Lower | 11.8% | 85 | 23.8% | 1.0*% | 6.4% | 13 |
| 21 | Oneida | 39.9 | Lower | 14.1% | 52 | 22.2% | 1.8% | 4.6% | 17 |
| 21 | Jefferson † | 39.9 | Lower | 16.9% | 69 | 24.5% | 1.0*% | 5.9% | 16 |
| 23 | Niagara | 37.5 | Lower | 13.8% | 47 | 23.3% | 1.5% | 5.9% | 18 |
| 23 | Franklin † | 37.5 | Lower | 13.4% | 88 | 23.6% | 1.0*% | 3.9% | 29 |
| 25 | Warren † | 37.1 | Lower | 14.8% | 69 | 26.3% | 1.0*% | 4.3% | 24 |
| 26 | Westchester | 36.4 | Lower | 11.2% | 55 | 34.4% | 0.6% | 6.1% | 19 |
| 27 | Cattaraugus † | 36.0 | Lower | 13.8% | 71 | 24.2% | 1.0*% | 5.0% | 25 |
| 28 | St. Lawrence † | 35.8 | Lower | 13.9% | 74 | 22.7% | 1.0*% | 5.3% | 23 |
| 29 | Lewis † | 35.5 | Lower | 14.3% | 70 | 23.3% | 1.0*% | 5.2% | 26 |
| 30 | Washington | 34.9 | Lower | 14.5% | 53 | 27.2% | 1.0*% | 5.0% | 28 |
| 31 | Montgomery | 34.6 | Lower | 19.1% | 53 | 23.8% | 1.0*% | 4.7% | 32 |
| 32 | New York (Manhattan) | 34.5 | Lower | 6.7% | 77 | 30.6% | 0.4% | 7.6% | NYC |
| 32 | Oswego | 34.5 | Lower | 12.8% | 53 | 24.6% | 1.0*% | 7.0% | 21 |
| 34 | Fulton † | 33.8 | Lower | 18.9% | 56 | 24.6% | 1.0*% | 3.5% | 36 |
| 35 | Yates † | 33.7 | Lower | 9.6% | 72 | 28.4% | 1.0*% | 3.1% | 37 |
| 36 | Chemung | 33.1 | Lower | 15.6% | 57 | 21.6% | 1.0*% | 6.1% | 30 |
| 37 | Broome | 32.7 | Lower | 12.8% | 46 | 20.3% | 1.3% | 7.1% | 22 |
| 38 | Schenectady | 32.6 | Lower | 12.7% | 41 | 23.8% | 1.3% | 5.8% | 30 |
| 39 | Allegany † | 32.2 | Lower | 13.2% | 56 | 21.1% | 1.0*% | 7.1% | 27 |
| 40 | Tioga | 32.0 | Lower | 16.4% | 48 | 23.3% | 1.0*% | 5.5% | 33 |
| 41 | Chautauqua | 31.4 | Lower | 15.6% | 54 | 21.1% | 1.0*% | 5.9% | 34 |
| 42 | Cayuga | 31.1 | Lower | 17.8% | 47 | 24.6% | 1.0*% | 3.8% | 41 |
| 43 | Steuben | 30.9 | Lower | 16.2% | 51 | 20.7% | 1.0*% | 6.0% | 35 |
| 44 | Rensselaer | 30.6 | Lower | 16.0% | 57 | 21.7% | 0.9% | 5.3% | 38 |
| 45 | Cortland | 30.2 | Lower | 11.9% | 56 | 24.6% | 1.0*% | 4.6% | 39 |
| 46 | Herkimer † | 29.9 | Lower | 13.4% | 54 | 24.2% | 1.0*% | 4.3% | 42 |
| 47 | Madison | 29.5 | Lower | 9.7% | 66 | 23.8% | 1.0*% | 4.2% | 44 |
| 48 | Orleans | 28.3 | Lower | 10.0% | 40 | 27.4% | 1.0*% | 5.1% | 40 |
| 49 | Wyoming | 28.2 | Lower | 17.9% | 48 | 21.7% | 1.0*% | 3.6% | 46 |
| 50 | Tompkins | 28.0 | Lower | 14.4% | 46 | 21.4% | 1.0*% | 5.5% | 43 |
| 51 | Albany | 27.3 | Lower | 16.2% | 46 | 23.0% | 0.8% | 5.0% | 45 |
| 52 | Erie | 24.4 | Lower | 12.3% | 43 | 21.4% | 1.0% | 4.9% | 48 |
| 53 | Onondaga | 24.3 | Lower | 7.2% | 48 | 20.7% | 1.2% | 5.2% | 47 |
| 54 | Seneca | 23.8 | Lower | 9.3% | 38 | 25.1% | 1.0*% | 4.5% | 49 |
| 55 | Ontario | 22.1 | Lower | 8.6% | 49 | 22.6% | 1.0*% | 3.7% | 50 |
| 56 | Wayne | 20.1 | Lower | 7.1% | 47 | 23.1% | 1.0*% | 3.3% | 52 |
| 56 | Genesee | 20.1 | Lower | 9.9% | 39 | 20.6% | 1.0*% | 4.6% | 51 |
| 58 | Saratoga | 18.8 | Lower | 12.6% | 59 | 20.0% | 0.6% | 3.3% | 54 |
| 59 | Livingston | 16.9 | Lower | 7.6% | 36 | 19.0% | 1.0*% | 5.2% | 53 |
| 60 | Monroe | 13.6 | Lower | 4.9% | 27 | 23.5% | 0.8% | 4.9% | 55 |
Two counties are not ranked because they fall below the 12,000-housing-unit floor: Hamilton and Schuyler.
What we will watch
We plan to update this index quarterly, beginning with the first quarter of 2027. Three things will tell us where New York goes from here: whether the Bronx’s delinquency rate, already among the highest in the state, keeps rising; whether the lower Hudson Valley’s price cutting, led by Orange County, turns into rising delinquency; and whether New York’s average foreclosure timeline, which has stayed near 2,000 days for three years, finally begins to shorten.
Sources and data
- Foreclosure activity, timelines, 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, foreclosure timelines, and the counties with the worst August filing rates.
- Housing market softness. Realtor.com Economic Research, county inventory core metrics through September 2026. Used for the price-cut share, median days on market, and active listing counts.
- Housing, mortgage status, cost burden, seasonal homes, 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, the seasonal-home share behind the second-home flag, and the unemployment rate in the index.
- Current unemployment. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, county unemployment rates, the 12 published months from August 2025 through August 2026 (BLS published no October 2025 figures). Used only for the sensitivity test, not in the standard index.
- Mortgage delinquency. CFPB Mortgage Performance Trends, data through December 2025. Used for the 90-or-more day delinquency rates.
- Historical foreclosure rates and timelines. RealtyTrac, 2009 Year-End Foreclosure Market Report (via the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission archive), and the RealtyTrac and ATTOM year-end U.S. foreclosure market reports for 2011 through 2025, including ATTOM’s 2018 and 2025 reports. Used for New York’s 2009 filing count and rank and the fourth-quarter average days to complete a foreclosure for New York and the U.S. New York’s timeline ranks after 2013 are taken from the order of ATTOM’s published lists of the longest states.
- Foreclosure process. New York State Courts, Foreclosure Case Basics, Answering the Complaint, and 90 Day Pre-Foreclosure Notice, and the New York State Attorney General’s homeowner resources. Used for the notice, answer, settlement conference, and sale rules, the Homeowner Protection Program, and the deed-theft figures.
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.