Shelby County Foreclosure Report — Q2 2026
Shelby County Foreclosure Report — Q2 2026
New foreclosure filings in Shelby County fell by nearly a third last quarter — 237, the fewest in any quarter since at least the start of 2025. But the auction block barely noticed: completed foreclosure sales slipped only 11 percent, investors still took four of every ten homes sold, and the median auction price snapped back to $121,001.
| 237 new filings |
−31.5% vs. Q2 2025 |
40% of auctioned homes bought by investors |
$121,001 median auction price (rebound from Q1’s low) |
Findings
1. New filings fell by nearly a third — to the lowest quarter on our books
Shelby County recorded 237 new foreclosure filings in the second quarter of 2026 — about 2.6 a day, down from 3.8 a day the quarter before. (Each filing is an “Appointment of Substitute Trustee,” the legal first step of a Tennessee foreclosure, typically arriving after months of missed payments.) That is 30.5% below the prior quarter and 31.5% below the same quarter last year. In the five quarters before this one, filings never came in below 271; this quarter landed 12.5% under that floor. June is not an artifact of slow paperwork — the Register’s index was verified through July 1, 2026 at pull time, and the data was pulled July 6.
One quarter is not a trend. Filings bounced between 271 and 346 for five straight quarters before this drop, and a single strong or weak quarter has reversed before — the four quarters before this one still produced 1,294 filings. Whether Q2 is the start of relief or a pause will be the first thing next quarter’s edition checks.
A filing is also not a lost home: many of these loans are reinstated, modified, or paid off before any auction happens, which is why completed sales run far below filings in every quarter.
Facing foreclosure yourself? Free HUD-approved counseling: Homeowner’s HOPE Hotline, 888-995-4673. A filing does not mean the home is already lost.
2. The auction block barely slowed down
While new filings fell 30.5%, completed foreclosure sales slipped only 11.4% — 124 homes went through auction to a recorded deed in Q2. That gap is the pipeline at work: the homes sold at auction this quarter mostly entered foreclosure months ago, when filings were still running at last year’s pace. Measured against the same quarter’s filings, completions ran at 52.3% — up sharply from Q1’s 41.1%, though still shy of Q3 2025’s 54.6%. If filings stay low, the auction calendar should thin out in the second half of 2026; if they rebound, this quarter was a breather, not a turn.
3. Individual buyers took their largest share yet — but investors still bought two of every five homes
Of the 124 homes sold at auction, 50 (40%) went to investment entities — LLCs, partnerships, and trusts — 54 (44%) went back to the foreclosing lender or a government-backed holder, the largest single group this quarter, and 18 (15%) were bought by individual people (2 records were ambiguous). That 15% is the largest individual-buyer share in the five quarters of auction data this report tracks — in 2025 it ran as low as 7% — though investors still out-bought individuals nearly three to one.
The repeat buyers came back. Nine investment entities bought two or more foreclosures apiece this quarter — 27 homes between them, more than half of all investor purchases. WZ Capital GP led with six, after tying Butler Properties LLC for the Q1 lead at five; Butler took four this quarter; M and T Investments International, REI Capital, and Southeast Investors took three each; Westin Properties, VMC REO, Stori Grant Property Collection, and Shunen 3 bought two apiece.
| Quarter | Auction sales | Investment entities | Lender / government | Individuals | Ambiguous |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 Q2 | 171 | 75 (44%) | 70 | 20 | 6 |
| 2025 Q3 | 148 | 77 (52%) | 56 | 10 | 5 |
| 2025 Q4 | 135 | 58 (43%) | 62 | 9 | 6 |
| 2026 Q1 | 140 | 61 (44%) | 60 | 15 | 4 |
| 2026 Q2 | 124 | 50 (40%) | 54 | 18 | 2 |
4. The median auction price snapped back to $121,001
The median completed foreclosure sale in Q2 2026 was $121,001, across the 107 of 124 deeds that recorded a sale amount. That is a 13% rebound from Q1’s $107,050 — which this report flagged last quarter as a five-quarter low — and puts auction prices back inside the range they held through 2025 ($121,000 to $131,806, and within 2% of Q2 2025’s $123,011). It is still only a little more than half of what a typical Memphis home sells for — Redfin’s citywide median was $210,000 for the three months ending May 2026, and Houzeo’s May figure was $215,000. As always, the records alone can’t say how much of that gap is condition and location and how much is auction discount — but the gap is part of what keeps the investor bidding in Finding 3 coming back.
5. The map shifted: Midtown, Cordova, and the suburbs led new filings
Last quarter the heaviest filing loads sat in Frayser, South Memphis, and Whitehaven. This quarter the top of the table looks different. Among the 132 new filings whose property address could be mapped (see methodology), Midtown’s 38104 and Cordova’s 38016 tied for the most at 9 each, with Collierville’s 38017, Bartlett’s 38134, Southwest Memphis’s 38109, and 38111 around the University of Memphis each recording 8, and Millington’s 38053 at 7. Q1’s leaders fell down the list — Frayser’s 38127 to 7, South Memphis’s 38106 and Whitehaven’s 38116 to 6. On the auction side the old pattern held: 38109 closed more foreclosure sales than any other ZIP (11 of the 117 mappable), with Frayser second at 10. Three honest cautions: about 44% of the quarter’s filings couldn’t be mapped to a ZIP, so this ranking is indicative rather than a census; these are raw counts, not rates, and bigger ZIPs have more homes to lose; and at counts this small, a quarter-to-quarter reshuffle can be noise as easily as signal. Worth a watch, not yet a conclusion: whether the suburban share holds up in Q3.
6. Why a foreclosure cluster is more than a real-estate statistic
This report measures filings and sales, not what follows them — but national research has measured what follows. A study of geocoded foreclosure and crime data published in the Journal of Urban Economics (Cui & Walsh, 2015; NBER Working Paper 20593) found that a foreclosure by itself did not raise neighborhood crime — but once the foreclosed home sat vacant, violent crime in its immediate vicinity rose roughly 19%, and the effect grew the longer the property stayed empty. A quarter in which fewer homes enter foreclosure — but investors and lenders still absorb roughly six of every seven that reach auction — is, by that evidence, a quarter in which what happens to those homes after the sale matters as much as the sale itself.
7. The foreclosure machine changed hands this quarter
Foreclosing lenders must appoint a substitute trustee — usually a specialist law firm — to run the process, and this quarter the work moved. Padgett Law Group was named in 37 of the 237 filings, up from 22 last quarter even as total filings fell by a third. AVT Title Services, which led Q1 with 43 appointments, fell to 13; Foundation Legal Group went from 30 to 12; Western Progressive from 25 to 11; Mackie Wolf from 21 to 5. Rubin Lublin barely moved, 23 to 24. The five busiest trustee shops — Padgett, Rubin Lublin, the solo practice of Clifton E. Darnell (15), Robertson Anschutz Schneid Crane & Partners (14), and LLG Trustee TN (14) — were named in at least 104 of the quarter’s 237 filings (44%), a concentration almost identical to Q1’s 42% under a very different roster. Trustee assignments typically follow servicer contracts, so a shuffle like this usually says more about which lenders’ loans are foreclosing than about the firms themselves — but for anyone tracking where Memphis foreclosures are headed next, the dockets to watch have changed.
8. The tax-sale pipeline kept growing while mortgage filings fell
Mortgage foreclosure isn’t the only way Shelby County residents lose homes. As of July 6, 2026, the County Trustee’s published tax-sale list — properties with delinquent property taxes; the parcel-level list is downloadable from that page — held 2,490 parcels: 640 assigned to Tax Sale 2301 (scheduled October 27, 2026), 1,444 assigned to Tax Sale 2302 (now scheduled for April 13, 2027, per the Trustee’s schedule), and 406 still listed under Tax Sale 2202, whose April 21, 2026 auction has already run. That is up from 2,238 parcels when this report last captured the list on June 10 — and it now stands at more than ten times the quarter’s 237 new foreclosure filings, and twenty times the 124 foreclosures actually completed — though it is a separate process from every number above.
Quarter by quarter
| Quarter | Initiations (Appt. of Sub. Trustee) |
Completed sales (Sub. Trustee’s Deed) |
Sales as share of filings (same quarter) | Median completed- sale price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 Q2 | 346 | 171 | 49.4% | $123,011 |
| 2025 Q3 | 271 | 148 | 54.6% | $131,806 |
| 2025 Q4 | 336 | 135 | 40.2% | $121,000 |
| 2026 Q1 | 341 | 140 | 41.1% | $107,050 |
| 2026 Q2 | 237 | 124 | 52.3% | $121,001 |
Completed sales in a quarter generally stem from filings made in earlier quarters, so the ratio column compares same-quarter totals — it is not the share of those particular filings that ended in a sale. Many filings never reach sale: loans are reinstated, modified, paid off, or sales are postponed. The report’s records begin January 2025; Q1 2025 (325 filings, 120 completed sales) predates the five-quarter window above but is visible in the monthly chart below.
Where Q2 2026 foreclosure activity concentrated
Top 10 ZIP codes by initiations, among records with a resolvable property address.
| ZIP | Initiations (Q2 2026) | Completed sales (Q2 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| 38104 | 9 | 8 |
| 38016 | 9 | 7 |
| 38109 | 8 | 11 |
| 38111 | 8 | 8 |
| 38134 | 8 | 5 |
| 38017 | 8 | 1 |
| 38127 | 7 | 10 |
| 38053 | 7 | 2 |
| 38116 | 6 | 8 |
| 38106 | 6 | 6 |
ZIP resolved for 132 of 237 initiations and 117 of 124 completed sales; see methodology.
Show the full ZIP table (every resolvable ZIP, so you can check us)
| ZIP | Initiations (Q2 2026) | Completed sales (Q2 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| 38104 | 9 | 8 |
| 38016 | 9 | 7 |
| 38109 | 8 | 11 |
| 38111 | 8 | 8 |
| 38134 | 8 | 5 |
| 38017 | 8 | 1 |
| 38127 | 7 | 10 |
| 38053 | 7 | 2 |
| 38116 | 6 | 8 |
| 38106 | 6 | 6 |
| 38117 | 6 | 1 |
| 38112 | 5 | 4 |
| 38128 | 5 | 4 |
| 38125 | 5 | 2 |
| 38108 | 4 | 5 |
| 38115 | 4 | 5 |
| 38103 | 3 | 3 |
| 38122 | 3 | 3 |
| 38133 | 3 | 2 |
| 38141 | 3 | 1 |
| 38107 | 2 | 3 |
| 38002 | 2 | 2 |
| 38018 | 2 | 2 |
| 38118 | 2 | 2 |
| 38135 | 2 | 2 |
| 38114 | 1 | 3 |
| 38105 | 1 | 1 |
| 38126 | 1 | 1 |
| 38028 | 1 | 0 |
| 38139 | 1 | 0 |
| 38119 | 0 | 3 |
| 38011 | 0 | 1 |
| 38344 | 0 | 1 |
Methodology
Foreclosure initiations are documents indexed as “Appointment of Substitute TR” and completed foreclosure sales are “Sub Trustees Deeds,” both from the Shelby County Register of Deeds public search index (search.register.shelby.tn.us), by recording date, January 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026. Data pulled July 6, 2026; the Register’s index was verified through July 1, 2026 at pull time, so the full quarter is covered. Records are deduplicated by instrument number; three records carrying null dates in the Register’s index were excluded. The July pull re-downloaded all eighteen months and matched the June 10 pull record-for-record on every prior quarter — zero records added or removed — before adding the new quarter. A five-record sample spanning Q2 months and both document types was hand-checked against the Register’s details pages on July 6, 2026 (all matched on instrument number, type, and recording date), on top of the 25-record check the prior-quarter data passed in June. Counts reflect recorded instruments: a single loan or property can generate more than one appointment over time, so document counts may slightly exceed unique-property counts. Substitute-trustee deeds can also arise from non-mortgage liens (for example, one Q2 deed stems from a homeowners’ association foreclosure); counts reflect the document type as indexed. Trustee-firm totals count an instrument once per firm whenever any indexed grantee contains that firm’s name stem; name variants are grouped conservatively, so unmatched variants would only raise, not lower, the firm totals. Median sale prices are computed over deeds that record a consideration amount — 107 of 124 in Q2 2026, and between 119 and 156 per quarter across the prior four quarters.
Property ZIP codes come from the property description indexed on the instrument or, where absent, from the cross-referenced mortgage or deed of trust. Initiations resolve at a lower rate (132 of 237) than completions (117 of 124) because many appointments cross-reference older book-and-page-era instruments that carry no indexed address; ZIP figures describe resolvable records only.
Auction-buyer categories (Finding 3) classify the grantee names on Substitute Trustee’s Deeds: names containing bank/servicer/government-lender identifiers count as lender-side; other corporate markers (LLC, LP, trust, etc.) count as investment entities; personal names count as individuals. Two of 124 records list only the trustee and were excluded as ambiguous. The same classification was applied to all five quarters for the trend table. A 47-record subsample was reviewed by hand this quarter: one assignment was contestable (a retirement plan counted as an individual buyer); reclassifying it would shift the investor share from 40% to 41%. Some grantee names carry a trailing “S TR” marker in the Register’s index; spot-checks against the underlying deeds confirm these are the purchasing entity, and name variants with and without the marker are combined in the repeat-buyer counts. The split is approximate by nature and is reported rounded.
External references: typical Memphis sale price $210,000–$215,000 per the Redfin and Houzeo Memphis market pages as of May 2026; foreclosure-vacancy-crime research: Lin Cui & Randall Walsh, “Foreclosure, vacancy and crime,” Journal of Urban Economics 87 (2015), also NBER Working Paper 20593. This report does not measure crime and makes no causal claims about specific Memphis properties.
Tax-sale inventory is the Shelby County Trustee’s published tax-sale extract (shelbycountytrustee.com), downloaded July 6, 2026 — a point-in-time inventory, not a quarterly flow. Sale dates are from the Trustee’s published Tax Sale Schedule page, checked July 6, 2026. The June 10, 2026 figure cited for comparison comes from the same extract as downloaded for last quarter’s report.
The Daily News public foreclosure notices (memphisdailynews.com) were reviewed on July 6, 2026 but excluded from counts: Tennessee trustee-sale notices typically run in multiple weekly insertions, so notice counts overstate unique foreclosures.
Counts reflect documents as indexed by the Register and may differ from measures based on auctions scheduled, notices published, or court actions. This report contains aggregate statistics only; no individual homeowner information is published.
If you are facing foreclosure: free HUD-approved housing counseling is available through the Homeowner’s HOPE Hotline at 888-995-4673, and a foreclosure filing does not mean the home is already lost — many loans are reinstated, modified, or paid off before auction. Journalists seeking the homeowner-side perspective can reach HUD-approved housing counseling agencies in Memphis via the directory at hud.gov.
About this report. Compiled by As-Is Home Buyer, a home-buying company that purchases homes directly from Shelby County owners. Disclosure: As-Is Home Buyer purchases homes directly from owners, including owners facing foreclosure — readers should weigh that interest; the report is built solely from the public records described above, the full ZIP-level aggregates are published in the expandable table in this report, and the quarterly aggregate dataset is available on request. Analysis by Nick Hedberg. Questions about the report or the underlying data: (901) 763-6616 · shelby.as-ishomebuyer.com/memphis. This report may be cited with attribution to “As-Is Home Buyer Shelby County Foreclosure Report.”
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