Foreclosures jump 52.9% across the region as buyers regain negotiating power

ALBANY — On opposite sides of the Dougherty-Lee county line, two seemingly contradictory housing trends are unfolding at the same time.

In Dougherty County, the number of residential properties advertised for foreclosure has nearly doubled this year. In neighboring Lee County, developers are preparing to add hundreds of new houses and apartments, including homes aimed at buyers who have struggled to find newer housing at an attainable price.

The trends, however, are not as contradictory as they may initially appear.

Across southwest Georgia, the housing market is adjusting after the buying frenzy that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, while elevated mortgage rates, household costs and the condition of the region’s existing housing stock are complicating what “affordable” means.

And foreclosure activity is rising sharply.

An Albany Herald analysis of foreclosure-sale advertisements across 39 southwest Georgia counties identified 604 advertisements from January through June 2026, compared with 395 during the same six months of 2025 — an increase of 52.9%.

That increase almost exactly mirrors a statewide trend independently identified by ATTOM, a national real estate data company.

ATTOM reported 8,433 Georgia properties with foreclosure filings during the first half of 2026, up 52.4% from the same period last year. That was the third-largest year-over-year percentage increase among states with at least 500 filings.

Georgia also had the nation’s 11th-highest foreclosure rate during the first half of the year, with 0.19% of the state’s housing units — about one in every 539 — receiving a foreclosure filing.

The two datasets measure different things. ATTOM counts properties receiving default notices, scheduled-auction notices or bank repossessions and attempts to count each property once. The Herald analysis tracks residential notices advertising properties for foreclosure sale under Georgia’s nonjudicial foreclosure process.

But the nearly identical year-over-year increases provide independent evidence that what is happening in southwest Georgia is part of a broader statewide shift.

ATTOM reported 4,549 Georgia properties with some type of foreclosure filing during the first quarter, up 77.8% from the first quarter of 2025. Foreclosure proceedings were started on 4,356 properties.

By June, 1,328 Georgia properties received foreclosure filings, equivalent to one in every 3,420 housing units.

The most dramatic increase among the Albany area’s two largest housing markets was in Dougherty County.

The Herald analysis identified 94 unique residential properties advertised for foreclosure from January through August, compared with 50 during the same period last year and 44 in 2024.

When repeat advertisements are included — generally because a scheduled sale was postponed and the property was advertised again — Dougherty recorded 129 advertisements through August this year, compared to 61 during the same period in 2025 and 62 in 2024.

ATTOM CEO Rob Barber has described rising foreclosure activity nationally as a continued normalization following years of unusually low levels, while cautioning that the trend also could indicate growing pressure on homeowners.

“While volumes remain below historical peaks,” Barber said in ATTOM’s first-quarter report, continued increases suggest “financial pressure may be building for some homeowners.”

Jon Smith, a Realtor and appraiser with Virtual Realty Team, who marks 30 years in the real estate business this year, said the current southwest Georgia market also has to be viewed against the extraordinary conditions that followed the pandemic.

“I think we saw a bit of a spike in values after COVID, which created a bit of a buying frenzy,” Smith said. “Homes would be listed slightly above market value, and they’d be under contract within a day.”

In some cases, he said, sellers were receiving $10,000, $15,000 or even $20,000 more than their asking price.

“It was hard to believe,” Smith said.

That is not the market buyers and sellers are navigating today.

“What we’re seeing now might actually be a good thing,” Smith said. “We’re seeing values stabilize a little, depending on the location.”

Buyers also have regained some negotiating power.

“Buyers have a little more advantage in the current market than they did in recent years,” Smith said. “Homes can be listed at value or even slightly below, and they may sit for a while right now.”

That shift is particularly visible when compared with a market where buyers once had to make rapid decisions and compete with multiple offers.

But a less competitive market does not necessarily mean an affordable one.

Brandon Barnes, a southwest Georgia independent contractor who is currently renovating a house he plans to sell for about $359,000, said he sees the affordability problem from both sides — as someone working on the housing stock and as a consumer looking at what today’s prices and interest rates mean for an ordinary household. 

“Who really can afford $2,000 to $3,000 monthly payments for 20 or 30 years?” Barnes said.

He estimated financing about $300,000 of the property he is renovating would produce a payment of roughly $2,300 per month with escrow. Then, he noted, buyers have to consider everything else in a household budget.

“The average home has two car loans, plus mortgage or rent,” Barnes said.

For Barnes, the affordability question is less about whether houses are technically available than what buyers are getting for the price.

“Realistically, go look at the homes for sale,” he said. “They need updating, or something’s wrong with the homes, and they are still priced at $200,000-plus.”

That observation is particularly relevant in Dougherty County, where Albany has a large stock of older housing.

The city’s Build Albany Housing Initiative is intended to connect potential homeowners with lenders, financial assistance and counseling while encouraging workforce housing development.

City Manager Terrell Jacobs told commissioners that employers need housing for the workers they are trying to recruit and retain.

“We need housing for teachers,” Jacobs said. “We need to create a pipeline for folks to get their situation together so they can buy a house.”

Other projects are adding or attempting to preserve rental housing. The redevelopment of the historic Davis Exchange Building downtown is expected to create 56 apartments, including 41 income-restricted units. City officials also have been working through problems surrounding a stalled 32-unit apartment development on South Carroll Street.

Lee County faces a different version of the affordability problem.

Foreclosure activity there has been considerably more stable. Thirty-one unique residential properties were advertised for foreclosure from January through August this year, compared with 29 during the same period in 2025. Because Lee County has a much smaller housing stock, however, its foreclosure-advertisement rate is actually slightly higher than Dougherty County’s — about 2.38 properties per 1,000 housing units compared with 2.31.

The difference between the counties is not so much their current foreclosure rate as their trajectory. Lee’s count has changed little. Dougherty’s has almost doubled.

At the same time, developers in Lee County are betting that demand exists for hundreds of additional housing units.

The 32 Crossing subdivision is planned for roughly 300 homes. Its first houses are expected to start at around $255,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bath home with a garage, while a larger floor plan is expected to start around $279,000.

Infrastructure for the development has been supported by a $2.5 million Rural Workforce Housing Initiative grant through the OneGeorgia Authority.

Nearby, the planned Wooten Station development is expected to add 125 apartments and retail space.

Those projects represent a substantial bet that Lee County has households looking for housing that its existing inventory has not provided.

Barnes said the difference between Albany and other markets is noticeable even to an individual seller. His sister-in-law recently sold a house in Valdosta without difficulty, he said, while houses in Albany appear to be taking longer to move.

Smith said location remains critical to how quickly properties sell, making broad predictions about the market difficult. And, despite the uncertainty, he cautioned buyers and sellers against trying to perfectly time it.

“People always are going to speculate, but in reality the best time to do something is always now,” Smith said. “There’s less urgency in the process, but still, now is always the best time to buy or sell because no one really knows what the future will bring.”

National conditions help explain why the current market feels so different from the frenzy Smith described.

Existing-home sales fell 1.7% in July, according to the National Association of Realtors, as elevated mortgage rates continued to restrain buyers. The national median existing-home price reached $434,100, 2% higher than a year earlier.

First-time buyers accounted for only 29% of July purchases, while sales of houses priced below $250,000 remained particularly weak.

Those national prices bear little resemblance to much of southwest Georgia, where $250,000 can still buy a house. But purchase price is only part of affordability.

A $200,000 mortgage at 3.5% carries principal and interest of about $898 per month on a 30-year loan. At 6.5%, the same mortgage costs about $1,264 — roughly $366 more every month before property taxes, homeowners insurance or mortgage insurance are added.

Higher rates also discourage existing homeowners from moving. A homeowner who financed a house at 3% or 4% during the years of historically low rates must give up that loan to purchase another property at today’s rates. Economists have described the resulting reluctance to sell as the mortgage “lock-in” effect.

Builders face their own pressures. Single-family housing starts nationally fell 9.9% in July to their lowest level since November 2022 as builders contended with borrowing costs, construction expenses and uncertainty about demand.

Those costs make producing lower-priced new housing difficult because land, infrastructure, labor and materials establish a floor beneath what builders can charge.

The result is a housing market in which several seemingly conflicting things can be true at once.

Homes can take longer to sell while monthly payments remain unaffordable for many potential buyers. A community can have older or distressed houses available while lacking move-in-ready housing people want. Developers can build hundreds of new units while homeowners elsewhere in the same market enter foreclosure.

The differences become even more pronounced across southwest Georgia.

Lowndes County, home to Valdosta and one of the region’s largest housing markets, recorded 118 unique residential properties advertised for foreclosure through August, compared with 70 during the same period last year. Crisp County’s count increased by about 82%, Brooks County’s by 80% and Colquitt County’s by about 52%. Other counties showed little change or declines.

Those differences are a reminder that southwest Georgia is not one housing market.

Foreclosure advertisements across the 39 counties analyzed by the Herald increased 52.9% during the first half of 2026, almost exactly matching the 52.4% statewide increase independently reported by ATTOM.

Meanwhile, Smith’s description of a market shifting away from the post-pandemic buying frenzy is visible in houses sitting longer and buyers regaining some negotiating power. That may eventually produce a healthier balance between buyers and sellers.

For now, however, southwest Georgia’s housing challenge is increasingly about more than how much a house costs.

It is whether the houses already here are in the condition and locations buyers want, whether new homes can be built at prices local incomes can support and whether the people who already own homes can continue to afford them.