With the recent revelation coming from Realty Trac’s reporting process, Foreclosure Research has come across some interesting findings.

Referring back to the article, “How many foreclosures? ‘We know we’re underreporting West Virginia,’” Rick Sharga provided the following insight, “West Virginia is one of the states where we need to do a better job.”  He continued by stating, “We know we’re under reporting in West Virginia,” and that, “we concentrate on areas of 25,000 people or more.”

The article also touched upon the fact that Realty Trac stated West Virginia had a very low foreclosure rate, which proved to be false.  Taking this information into consideration, there also were several other states with extremely low foreclosure rates according to Realty Trac’s quarterly reports. This then brings up the question; Could these other low foreclosure rate states also have sparsely populated areas similar to that of West Virginia? The answer is, yes.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau at least 6 states with extremely low foreclosure rates had a majority of metro areas and counties with less than 25,000 in their respective populations.

One of these states is Alabama.  According to the U.S Census, at least 24 counties have a population of less than 25,000.   A far lower foreclosure rate was reported for Mississippi, where more than half of the total counties were below 25,000 in population.

Alaska, a state with extremely low foreclosure rate, exhibits populations of lower than 25,000 in 22 of the total 27 counties.

While Maine has relatively large counties, two of the top three metro areas have as little as 35,000 in their populations.

The state of Iowa has 75 of 99 total counties with less than 25,000 in population. Similarly, Vermont showed almost half of its counties have populations of 30,000 and lower.

These states were just a sample of the many states with a majority of sparsely populated areas. In fact, the majority of the country is filled with rural areas. For that, one must wonder how a foreclosure listing company that only focuses on populations of 25,000 or more can have an accurate take on nation-wide foreclosure rates.