Florida leads US foreclosures. South Florida isn't on the list

Florida recorded the worst foreclosure rate in the United States in the first half of 2026: 27,494 properties with filings, one in every 373 homes, up 33% year over year. Every Florida metro on ATTOM’s worst-rate list sits outside South Florida.

Why it matters

This is the week that headline reaches your investors, your lender and your buyers, and the version they will read says Florida. The data says something narrower and far more useful.

The metros carrying it are Punta Gorda at 0.50% of housing units, Lakeland at 0.48%, Cape Coral at 0.35%, and Jacksonville and Ocala at 0.31%. Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach do not appear. In June, the worst Florida counties were Charlotte, Polk, Okeechobee and Osceola. That is the Gulf Coast and the I-4 corridor, the two places that absorbed the most speculative single-family and townhome production in 2022 and 2023.

So this is not a Florida credit event. It is a product-and-place event, concentrated where builders delivered volume into markets with thin end-user demand, and where insurance and HOA costs landed hardest on the cheapest homes. If you build in South Florida, the correct read is that your comps are not in this dataset. If you are buying finished lots or standing inventory on the Gulf Coast, they are.

The numbers

Nationally, filings ran nearly 228,000 in the first half, up 21% on last year and 28% on two years ago, with foreclosure timelines shortening rather than stretching. Florida’s 20,358 foreclosure starts trailed only Texas.

Scale the rates and the gap is clear. On June figures Florida ran one filing per 2,106 housing units against one per 3,656 nationally, so the state rate is 1.74 times the national. Punta Gorda’s 0.50% is 1.85 times Florida’s own 0.27%, which means the worst metro is further above Florida than Florida is above the country.

Our own numbers say South Florida is still adding supply into this, at 1,860 permitted units a month on a trailing-12-month basis in May 2026, up 37.1% year over year, with metro home values down 2.9%. Softening prices with rising supply is a different condition from distress, and it is the one the flagship market is actually in.

What’s next

Two moves. If you buy distress, the discount is on the Gulf Coast now and the ATTOM county file is the map. If you build here, correct the record with anyone pricing your deal off a statewide headline. Track the market at the South Florida hub.