Pennsylvania’s Pre-Foreclosure Rates in 2025: A Numeric Decline Hiding Deeper Wounds

As the Numbers Fall, Homeowners Still Struggle to Stay Afloat

On paper, Pennsylvania’s housing market appears to be turning a corner. In May 2025, the state recorded 551 pre-foreclosure filings—a figure that marks a 37.6% drop from the previous month and an astonishing 52.2% decline compared to May 2024. For those scanning headlines, it’s tempting to interpret this as a housing system stabilizing after years of volatility. But numbers have a way of disguising distress.

In living rooms and kitchens across Pennsylvania—particularly in its post-industrial towns and struggling suburbs—homeowners are still fighting to keep their houses. The sharp statistical drop in pre-foreclosures doesn’t mean hardship has vanished. To the contrary, many families are hanging on by a thread, aided not by financial sustainability but by temporary protections, tightening credit, and economic adaptation that often delays the inevitable.

A Shifting Landscape in the Shadow of a Long Crisis

The current count of 4,381 pre-foreclosures filed from January through May 2025 is a continuation of the multi-year downward trend since the peak foreclosure crisis in 2010 when the state saw a cascade of 66,286 pre-foreclosure filings—nearly 20 times this year’s pace. The decline, which began in earnest around 2013, accelerated during the pandemic years amid federal and state-level eviction moratoriums and financial rescue programs.

But after the emergency legislation expired, the reality shifted. While the raw numbers suggest fewer homes entering default, this may not reflect relief as much as a new form of distress: delayed filings, more discreet financial support from family and community networks, and a housing market increasingly out of reach for working families.

In 2024, Pennsylvania saw 12,821 pre-foreclosures, already a significant drop from 24,439 in 2023. This year’s count, if sustained at the current rate, suggests the state could close 2025 with fewer than 11,000 pre-foreclosure cases. On one level, that’s progress. On another, it’s a measure of who’s already fallen behind and no longer has assets to lose.

Behind the Decline: Inflation, Wage Gaps, and the Invisible Struggle

Beneath the surface of these shrinking monthly filings are ordinary people, for whom housing affordability is now a daily negotiation. Sharon Martin, a 62-year-old home health aide from York, lives in the same brick row house her parents bought in the 1960s. She’s behind on her mortgage and has already dipped into her retirement to cover heating bills this past winter.

“I haven’t missed a payment until last year,” she says. “But groceries went up, gas went up, everything went up… except my paycheck.”

Sharon’s situation exemplifies a troubling paradox: a waning foreclosure rate is often not the result of widespread recovery but rather the endurance of those barely scraping by. While unemployment in Pennsylvania remains relatively stable, the contours of inflation—especially housing, food, and utilities—continue to strain residents whose wages haven’t kept pace in over a decade. Median home prices in Pennsylvania have inched closer to those seen in higher-growth states, yet income growth has stalled in many of the state’s rural, Black, and immigrant-majority communities.

A 2025 pre-foreclosure tally of 551 properties may seem low, but it doesn’t account for the countless families in forbearance agreements, those behind on property taxes, or renters who will never make it into foreclosure data but are still one missed paycheck away from displacement.

The Disappearance of the Middle: From Homeownership to Housing Instability

Nowhere is the erosion of homeownership more visible than in Pennsylvania’s former manufacturing hubs: Reading, Erie, New Castle. These areas, once centers of working-class prosperity, now face 21st-century challenges—low wages, aging infrastructure, and depopulation—while still relying on a housing stock built for a 20th-century economy.

In Allentown, Lisa Hernandez, a single mother of two, was served a notice of default despite working two jobs. “I’m not lazy. I just can’t keep up,” she said. “I was making it before COVID, but now… it’s like I’m always three steps behind.”

Her story speaks to another demographic shift within the market. Many low-income homeowners, particularly women of color, have leaned on informal arrangements—borrowing from family, delaying other essential expenses, or partnering with local nonprofits—just to stay in their homes. In some cases, these efforts don’t count toward official default statistics, obscuring the growing undercurrent of housing insecurity.