Northwest Arkansas foreclosure activity among lowest in the U.S.

A new survey shows the Northwest Arkansas metro — defined as Benton, Washington and Madison counties in Arkansas and McDonald County in Missouri — had just 33 homes in some stage of foreclosure during August, 41% lower than the number (56) a year ago.

That total equals one out of every 6,153 homes in some stage of the foreclosure process in August, good enough to rank the region at No. 211 among the nation’s 217 metro regions.

The August 2017 Foreclosure Market Report was produced by California-based Attom Data Solutions, which tracks national housing and foreclosure data.

A home goes into the foreclosure process when the owner can’t pay the mortgage. Banks begin the foreclosure process by filing a notice of a foreclosure hearing which will decide whether a home is sold at auction. A home is considered “distressed” when it’s under any stage of foreclosure.

Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at Attom, said that a foreclosure rate of 1% or less of all houses that exist in a market is considered healthy. That rate was 0.29% in the first half of 2017 for the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO region.

Among other Arkansas metros, Fort Smith (Crawford and Sebastian counties) ranked No. 157 in the nation with one out of every 2,919 homes in foreclosure. At No. 167, with one out of every 3,189 homes in foreclosure, was the Little Rock metro, which includes Faulkner, Grant, Lonoke, Perry, Pulaski and Saline counties.

For the entire state, Arkansas had 294 homes in the foreclosure process in August, a drop of nearly 44% from the same month in 2016. One out of every 4,541 homes (0.02%) was in foreclosure in August, which ranked the state No. 44 in the U.S.

Nationally, the foreclosure picture is mostly healthy. There were 75,115 properties with foreclosure filings in August, up 14% from an all-time low in July, but still down 21% from a year ago.