Georgia’s Pre-Foreclosure Rates Drop in 2025, But Homeowners Still Struggle to Stay Afloat

A Closer Look at the Shrinking but Still-Troubling Pre-Foreclosure Market

Beneath the spring green of Georgia’s blooming dogwoods lies a quieter, more sobering sign of economic distress: the slowly mounting pre-foreclosure notices on doorsteps across the state. While new data shows a notable decrease in pre-foreclosure activity in Georgia during May 2025, this statistical dip masks the anxious quiet of families fighting to hold on to their homes.

In May 2025, Georgia recorded 971 pre-foreclosure filings—a sharp 19.23% decline from April’s count of 1,202. That’s also down 7.07% compared to the same time last year when 1,045 homes entered the early stages of the foreclosure process.

Yet behind that downward trend are thousands of struggling households, many of which are still living paycheck to paycheck in a housing market that has moved on from them. The day-to-day lives of these homeowners—many pushed to the margins by rising interest rates, inflation, and stagnant wages—offer a stark reminder: a drop in numbers doesn’t mean the crisis is over.

The Data Shows a Cooldown, But the Pressure Remains High

At first glance, the numbers offer hope. After years of turbulence—both economic and emotional—Georgia’s early-stage foreclosure activity appears to be veering away from the highs of the past two years. In 2023, the state reported a staggering 20,799 homes in pre-foreclosure, a dramatic increase from the pandemic-era lows of 2020 to 2022. Filings dipped slightly in 2024 to 13,399, and with 5,199 properties recorded through May 2025, the state appears on track to finish the year even lower.

The story told by the data is one of moderation following a frenetic period. But moderation doesn’t equal relief—not when you speak to the people living through it.

“We’re Just Trying to Keep the Lights On”

In the Atlanta suburbs, Diane Williams, a 58-year-old single grandmother, has been holding on by a thread since the start of the year. She took out a second mortgage on her modest split-level home in 2021 to cover medical bills for her daughter, who later passed away. Now raising two grandchildren on a part-time cashier’s wages and a dwindling savings account, she received her first Notice of Default in March.

“I’ve lived in this house for 31 years. It’s not just a place, it’s my life,” Diane said, dabbing her eyes as she sorted past-due utility bills piled on her kitchen table. “They tell you to get help, but help is waiting on a callback while your house is on the line.”

The drop in statewide filings doesn’t mean people like Diane are feeling the effects. The financial cushions that once protected homeowners early in the decade—stimulus checks, eviction moratoriums, mortgage forbearance programs—have disappeared. Now, budgets stretched far beyond their limits are slowly unraveling, especially for the state’s working-class and fixed-income families.

Pre-Foreclosure Trends Reflect a Changing Georgia Housing Market

The massive foreclosure waves of the Great Recession cast a long shadow over Georgia. Between 2008 and 2011, pre-foreclosure filings hovered at catastrophic levels, topping out at nearly 196,000 in 2010 alone. In that era, entire swaths of neighborhoods were rocked by a toxic combination of subprime lending, job losses, and housing overexpansion.

Post-pandemic Georgia isn’t seeing that kind of uncontrolled crash. What we’re witnessing now is something more complicated and perhaps more difficult to address—a grinding affordability crisis colliding with the limits of personal financial resilience.

Since 2023, the state’s housing market has tightened rapidly. Home prices continue to rise while inflation has eaten away at discretionary income. For homeowners on variable-rate mortgages or those who refinanced during the pandemic into low-interest loans but now face ballooning costs on necessities like healthcare, gas, and groceries, even a single missed paycheck can start a chain reaction. The result? A surge in pre-foreclosure filings in 2023 that are now gradually slowing, but not because conditions have significantly improved.

The beginning of 2025 included 5,199 pre-foreclosure filings across five months—a pace still significantly higher than pre-pandemic years like 2019, which saw only 9,313 filings over the entire year.