foreclosure

American  

[fawr-kloh-zher, fohr-] / fɔrˈkloʊ ʒər, foʊr- /

noun

Law.

• foreclosures
  plural

1. the act of foreclosing a mortgage or pledge.

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foreclosure Cultural  

1. A proceeding in which the financer of a mortgage seeks to regain property because the borrower has defaulted on payments.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• antiforeclosure
  noun
• nonforeclosure
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• foreclosures
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of foreclosure

First recorded in 1720–30; foreclose + -ure

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Explanation

When a homeowner can't afford to pay her mortgage, she might face foreclosure, which is when a bank repossesses a borrower's house. A bank most often starts foreclosure proceedings against someone who's taken out a loan to buy a house when that person stops making monthly payments. The agreement a borrower makes when she gets a bank mortgage is that she'll pay a certain amount of money every month, and failing to do it means risking foreclosure. The word foreclosure comes from the Latin words fors, "out," and clore "to shut."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

foreclosure foreclosures

On a $450,000 home, 20% is $90,000, and even 5% is more than $20,000 plus closing costs, which is hard to save after a job loss or foreclosure.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 14, 2026

The billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder quietly bought the property through a limited liability company at a foreclosure auction in Pomona in July, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026

Purchase price of Casa Encantada, the circa-1930s Bel-Air estate once prized as one of Los Angeles’s grandest homes, following an open-air foreclosure sale in July.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2026

Many in the second cohort had mortgages with relatively high interest rates and then ended up in foreclosure, said Jeffrey Zabel, one of the authors of the paper.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 16, 2026

“Umm...right, so the house went into foreclosure in 2009. That’s a year before he was spotted panhandling in the city.”

From "Odd One Out" by Nic Stone

Months later, he signed AB 238, a Harabedian bill that provided for 12 months of mortgage relief and banned late fees, foreclosures and negative reports to credit bureaus for homeowners who receive it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026

We don’t have to live in a world where people profit from tragedy, be it wildfires or a child with cancer, housing foreclosures or weapons manufacturing.

From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026

In Connecticut, residential foreclosures have increased about 34% since 2020 but remain below 2019 levels, according to property-data provider Attom.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026

Government agencies have also wound down some Covid-19-era programs for helping distressed borrowers, contributing to the rise in foreclosures.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 2, 2026

The various bonds you make from those loans will go bad not as the loans go bad but months later, after a lot of tedious foreclosures and bankruptcies and forced sales.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

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