Florida, the undisputed king of zombie foreclosures

The Sunshine state is home to the staggering majority of zombie foreclosures in the united states.

Florida leads the way with 1/3 of zombie foreclosures in Q2 for 2014.

Miami-Dade county is the county with the most zombie foreclosures in the state with a total 4,793 homes.

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What are zombie foreclosures you ask?

Zombie foreclosure are foreclosures where homeowners vacate the house being foreclosed upon, but the banks drag their feet in the foreclosing process and not taken back the home. In essence, the houses stay in limbo.

The homeowners who have left their houses may not know that they are still responsible for paying property taxes. Those are those are revenues that local governments are losing out on.

“It is estimated that more than $400 million in property tax revenue nationwide is likely delinquent because of these zombie foreclosures,” according to RealtyTrac.

According to the real estate information website, six of the ten metropolitan areas with the most zombie homes are:

• New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island: 13,574
• Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach: 12,958
• Chicago-Naperville-Joliet: 9,975
• Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater: 9,643
• Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington: 6,101
• Orlando-Kissimmee: 5,221
• Jacksonville: 3,532
• Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville: 2,041
• Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta: 1,906
• Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice: 1,845

Florida had 48,630 zombie foreclosures, 35,964 more than the state with the second most zombie foreclosures, New York (12,666).

The top 5 states are rounded out by New Jersey (12,170), Illinois (11,925) and Ohio (7,390).

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The one category where Florida does not lead when it comes to this type of foreclosure is the longest average time that a home has been in foreclosure.

According to RealtyTrac, New York (418 days) takes the longest time for a foreclosure to be completed.

The top 5 is made up by Florida (411 days), New Jersey (378 days), Illinois (272 days) and Hawaii (249 days).