Indiana has ranked among the states with the highest foreclosure rates in the country this year, but the state’s real estate industry says the headline number obscures a more mundane reality: foreclosure activity has essentially returned to where it stood before the pandemic.
The state recorded the highest foreclosure rate in the nation during the first quarter of 2026, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, with one filing for every 739 housing units — nearly two-thirds above the national rate. ATTOM’s February 2026 ranking also placed Indiana first. By mid-year the state had slipped behind Florida but remained among the top three.
The Indiana Association of Realtors, in an analysis of the ATTOM data, argues the ranking says as much about how Indiana processes foreclosures as about the health of its housing market. Indiana is one of a minority of states that require lenders to go through the courts to foreclose — a judicial process that moves slower and lets filings accumulate as open cases, inflating the state’s totals relative to states where lenders can sell outside the court system. All seven states at the top of the ATTOM ranking use judicial foreclosure, the group notes.
By the Realtors’ account, Indiana’s foreclosure rate has only climbed back to its 2018-2019 baseline, not surged past it.
A closer look at borrower distress supports the qualified reading. About 1.1 percent of Indiana mortgage debt is 90 or more days delinquent, the association reports — just above the 0.9 percent national figure and consistent with pre-pandemic levels. Roughly 99 percent of Hoosier mortgage debt remains current.
Still, the affordability strain is real, and it shows up first outside the mortgage. Delinquency on credit cards, student loans and auto loans is rising far faster in Indiana than mortgage delinquency, with credit card balances 90 days past due reaching 11.7 percent. Homeowners who fall behind on those obligations, the association warns, can reach a tipping point where the mortgage slips too.
That vulnerability is a byproduct of the same affordability Indiana touts as an advantage. The state’s median sale price sits around $260,000, well below the roughly $398,000 national figure, and recent Hoosier buyers spend about 32 percent of household income on their mortgage, compared with 41 percent nationally. But Indiana incomes run 11 to 12 percent below the national median, leaving thinner margins when utility bills, groceries and consumer prices climb.
Cheaper homes also mean more Hoosiers buy young and buy on modest incomes. Indiana has one of the highest homeownership rates in the country among households earning under $50,000, and among buyers 35 and younger. Those owners have built less equity and hold smaller financial cushions — the kind of reserves that carry a household through a job loss or medical bill without a missed payment.
ATTOM has cautioned against reading its numbers as a repeat of 2008. Chief executive Rob Barber has described the national trend as the market normalizing rather than cratering, and filings remain well below Great Recession peaks. Indiana logged roughly 4,000 quarterly filings in early 2026, against more than 14,000 at the height of the last crisis.
What the data captures, then, is less a wave of mortgage defaults than a squeeze on the margins — lower-income and younger homeowners with little slack absorbing rising costs across every part of their budgets. The foreclosure filing is where that pressure becomes visible in the courts. For most Hoosiers, the strain shows up earlier, on the credit card statement.
The numbers land as housing affordability moves to the forefront of political debate heading into November, with the cost of both buying and keeping a home pressing on households across the state.
