Nearly Half of the 50 Most Vulnerable Counties in New Jersey and Florida; Midwest and West Regions Less At Risk of Housing-Market Challenges

IRVINE, Calif. — April 7, 2020 — ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation’s premier property database and first property data provider of Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), today released a Special Report spotlighting county-level housing markets around the United States that are more or less vulnerable to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. The report shows that the Northeast has the largest concentration of the most at-risk counties, with clusters in New Jersey and Florida, while the West and Midwest have the smallest.

The report reveals that housing markets in 14 of New Jersey’s 21 counties are among the 50 most vulnerable in the country to the economic impact of the Coronavirus. The top 50 also include four in New York, three in Connecticut and 10 from Florida, but only one in California, none in other West Coast states and only one in the Southwest.

Markets are considered more or less at risk based on the percentage of housing units receiving a foreclosure notice in Q4 2019, the percent of homes underwater (LTV 100 or greater) in Q4 2019, and the percentage of local wages required to pay for major home ownership expenses. Rankings are based on a combination of those three categories in 483 counties around the United States with sufficient data to analyze. Counties were ranked in each category, from lowest to highest, with the overall conclusions based on a combination of the three rankings. See below for the full methodology.