One borough in New York City had 167 foreclosures in the first three months of 2026. The other four boroughs combined had 232. Queens alone accounted for almost half of every foreclosure filed in the entire city.
Related: The nationwide numbers are now in — foreclosures hit a 6-year high in Q1 2026
Those numbers, released this week by PropertyShark, are the highest Queens has seen since Q1 2024. They’re up 1% year over year, which sounds small — until you realize that Brooklyn came in at 62 foreclosures, Staten Island at 58, and Manhattan at 45. Queens had more than those three boroughs combined, and it wasn’t even close.
If you own a home in Queens — or honestly, anywhere that looks demographically similar — you need to understand what this number is actually telling you. It is not telling you that Queens is a bad place. It is telling you something about where middle-class homeowners are getting squeezed hardest, and it is an early signal for every homeowner who’s stretched thin in 2026.
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What the Numbers Actually Say
The zip codes leading Queens in foreclosure filings are 11412 (St. Albans) and 11413 (Laurelton, Brookville, Springfield Gardens, Rochdale), each tied at 12 first-time filings. These are solidly middle-class neighborhoods. Historically Black and Caribbean-American communities. Areas where people bought homes a decade or two ago, built equity, raised families, and assumed the house was a foundation rather than a risk.
A notable filing on the list was a 1,614-square-foot, two-story home at 122-15 9th Avenue in College Point, carrying a $1.4 million lien and ending up with the lender for $845,000. That’s not a neighborhood in crisis — that’s an expensive borough where the math stopped working.
Here’s what Queens has that’s different from the rest of NYC. More owner-occupied single-family homes. More homeowners with traditional mortgages (as opposed to co-ops or condos common in Manhattan and Brooklyn). More families who stretched to buy in 2019-2022 when rates were low, and who are now carrying fixed-rate mortgages that feel heavy relative to everything else that’s gotten more expensive since.
When property taxes go up in NYC, Queens homeowners feel it. When homeowner’s insurance jumps because of climate risk reassessments, Queens homeowners feel it. When groceries, utilities, and gas compound, the household budget that was barely working stops working. The mortgage itself didn’t change — but the space around it got squeezed until there was none left.
Why This Is the Canary, Not the Outlier
I’ve been watching economic stress patterns for three decades, and foreclosures concentrate first in the places where three things converge: owner-occupied single-family housing, middle-class incomes that looked fine in 2019, and expense categories that have all moved against those households at once.
Queens is the canary because Queens has all three. But every city in America has a “Queens equivalent” — the zip codes where middle-class homeowners stretched to buy, carry fixed-rate debt, and are now watching everything around that mortgage get more expensive. If you live in one of those neighborhoods — anywhere in the country — the Queens numbers matter to you.
Here’s the second-order effect most people don’t see coming. When foreclosures hit critical mass in a neighborhood, prices start sagging faster than the rest of the metro. That sag triggers a second wave: homeowners who were fine on paper a year ago now find themselves closer to underwater, which makes refinancing harder, which makes selling in a pinch harder, which pushes the next marginal household into the same foreclosure column. It compounds.
The 1% year-over-year uptick in Queens looks small in isolation. What I’m watching is whether Q2 or Q3 2026 stays at that level, or whether it accelerates — because the accelerating phase is where neighborhoods tip.
The Math You Should Run Today
If you own a home and you’ve felt the squeeze getting tighter in 2026, run these numbers right now. Not next month. Right now, at your kitchen table, with a calculator.
Your housing ratio. Add your monthly mortgage payment, property tax, homeowner’s insurance, and HOA fees if any. Divide by your gross monthly income.
- Under 28%: You have room. Foreclosure risk is low, but don’t get complacent.
- 28-35%: Standard stretch zone. Most families manage here, but it requires discipline and no surprises.
- 35-45%: The squeeze zone. One medical bill, one car repair, one lost paycheck — and you’re behind. Start the conversation with your servicer now, while you’re current.
- Over 45%: Emergency zone. You are one bad month from missing a mortgage payment. Take action before you miss, not after.
Your cushion. How many months of mortgage, taxes, insurance, and utilities do you have in actual cash savings? Not retirement accounts. Not home equity. Cash.
- 3+ months: You can weather a shock. Maintain.
- 1-2 months: You are exposed. Rebuild the cushion before taking any new debt.
- Under 1 month: You are living at the edge. Stop adding any new expense. Triage today.
What To Do If You’re In the Squeeze Zone
If the math tells you you’re stretched, here is the order of operations I’ve given to people who came to me in time and who came to me too late. The people who came too late didn’t move on any of these until they had already missed a payment, and by then their options had narrowed.
Step 1. Call your mortgage servicer and ask about loss mitigation options while you are still current. I cannot stress this enough. Servicers have dramatically more options for a borrower who has not yet missed a payment than for one who has. Ask specifically about a loan modification — a permanent change to your payment terms, either a lower rate, a longer amortization, or both. Ask about a forbearance — a temporary pause or reduction. These are not handouts. They are standard loss-mitigation tools the servicer uses because foreclosure costs them money, and a modified loan is cheaper for them than a foreclosure.
Step 2. Contact a HUD-approved housing counselor — free. HUD-approved counselors exist specifically to help homeowners in exactly this situation. They know what your servicer is willing to do, they can negotiate on your behalf, and they do not charge. Find one at hud.gov. Do not pay any private “foreclosure rescue” service. Those are almost always scams, especially the ones that promise to stop foreclosure for a fee.
Step 3. Audit every expense in your household. The squeeze that pushes homeowners into foreclosure is rarely one big thing. It’s usually the accumulation of small things — streaming subscriptions, higher cell plans, higher grocery bills, higher insurance. Subscriptions you forgot about. Services you could downgrade. A mortgage you can’t adjust is an argument to cut everything you can.
Step 4. If the math can’t work even with a modification, consider selling while you still have equity. Selling on your own timeline produces a different outcome than selling under foreclosure duress. If you can afford the home for another 60-90 days while listing it properly, you will net more, protect your credit, and keep control of the narrative. The hardest conversation I have with people is the one where they clung to a house for 18 months and lost it anyway — without ever trying the cleaner exit.
Step 5. If you’re underwater and can’t modify or sell, talk to a bankruptcy attorney before you miss a payment. Chapter 13 bankruptcy can stop a foreclosure cold and let you catch up missed payments over 3-5 years while keeping the house. Chapter 7 gives you a clean break if keeping the house isn’t the goal. Consultations are free with most attorneys. The option to file becomes harder the deeper in you are, not easier.
Why This Matters Today
The worst part of housing stress is how slowly it moves at first, and then how fast it moves at the end. Most homeowners who end up in foreclosure didn’t see it as foreclosure risk for years. They saw it as a tight month, then a tight quarter, then “we’ll get ahead after the bonus,” then a missed payment that the servicer let slide, then another, then a letter, then a lawsuit.
Every step in that sequence has an off-ramp. Every off-ramp closes a little more once you hit the next step. What Queens is telling us this quarter is that 167 households in one borough just ran out of off-ramps in the same three-month window. Most of them probably had no idea how close they were until it was too late to choose anything different.
You don’t have to be one of them. Run the math today. Pick up the phone today. The servicer you call while you’re still current is a servicer with many options. The servicer you call after two missed payments is a servicer with almost none.
This is the advice I’d give my own brother if his housing ratio were creeping past 40%. It’s not legal or financial advice for your specific situation. Only you know your numbers, your job stability, and the full picture of your household. Take this as input for your own decision. Nobody — not your servicer, not me, not anyone — gets to tell you what to do with your home.
If you know someone in a squeeze, forward this post. The phone call they make while they’re still current is a very different phone call than the one they’ll make after they miss a payment.
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