Punta Gorda and Lakeland, Florida posted the two worst foreclosure rates of any metro area in the country in the first half of 2026, with Columbia, South Carolina close behind in third place. Punta Gorda logged a foreclosure filing on half a percent of its housing units, Lakeland came in at 0.48 percent, and Columbia followed at 0.43 percent. Fayetteville, North Carolina tied for fifth nationally at 0.36 percent, matching Macon, Georgia. Nationally, the rate was one filing for every 632 housing units, meaning these four metros are running at two to three times the national pace.
This is not a single quarter's coincidence. The same cluster of metros, Punta Gorda, Lakeland, Columbia, and Fayetteville, topped the rankings in the first quarter of 2026 too, just in a slightly different order. Cape Coral and Jacksonville, both in Florida, and Jacksonville, North Carolina also placed among the ten worst metro rates in the first half of the year. Eight of the ten highest foreclosure rate metros in the country right now sit inside the three states where East West Maintenance operates.
A Persistent Pattern, Not a Blip
A metro area does not land at the top of this ranking by accident, and it does not stay there by accident either. Two consecutive reporting periods with the same five or six metros near the top points to structural conditions, insurance costs, storm exposure, and population growth outpacing wage growth, that are not resolving quickly. For a portfolio owner deciding where to expect the next wave of REO inventory, the metros that showed up in the first quarter and showed up again in the mid year report are a reasonable bet for where the next round will land too.
That predictability actually works in a portfolio owner's favor if the maintenance side is set up to match it. Instead of scrambling to find a vendor every time a property completes foreclosure in an unfamiliar metro, a company with steady coverage in Punta Gorda, Lakeland, Columbia, and Fayetteville can treat those markets as core territory rather than one off assignments. Response times shorten, vendor relationships deepen, and the cost per property tends to drop once a coordinator is running a consistent route through a metro instead of dispatching cold each time.
Coverage That Matches Where the Volume Actually Is
This is the case for building field coverage around the metros the data actually points to, rather than spreading thin across a wider footprint. East West Maintenance's coverage across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida lines up directly with the metro areas flagged as the nation's most consistent foreclosure hot spots for two straight reporting periods now. That overlap is not a coincidence. It reflects where the underlying foreclosure and REO volume has actually been concentrated for the better part of a year.
The next quarterly report will likely reshuffle the exact order of Punta Gorda, Lakeland, Columbia, and Fayetteville. It is unlikely to remove any of them from the top ten.