Over the next eight years, roughly 7.3 million homeowners who lost their homes to foreclosures or short sales during the Great Recession will pass the seven-year waiting period they needed to repair their credit and be able to purchase other homes, according to real estate data firm RealtyTrac.

This eight-year "boomerang wave" of newly eligible potential home buyers will run from 2015 through 2022 with 551,359 becoming eligible in 2015 and the peak coming in at more than 1.3 million in 2018, the firm reported.

Unsurprisingly, markets in the country with the highest percentages of potential boomerang buyers were in the states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis such as Florida, Nevada, Arizona and California.

Metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Dallas and Detroit also had significant numbers of these types of potential borrowers, RealtyTrac reported.

The firm said it took into account affordability for boomerang borrowers when evaluating different markets.

"Our definition of affordability was quite strict," Daren Blomquist, RealtyTrac vice president, explained. "We considered markets affordable only when monthly house payments on a median-priced home require 28% or less of median household income. Those markets that are still affordable for median income earners are the most likely to see the boomerang buyers actually materialize."

Chris Pollinger, SVP of sales at First Team Real Estate,  a San Diego Realty firm, said the housing crisis certainly hit home the fact that homeownership is not for everyone.

"[But] those burned during the crisis should not immediately throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to their second chance at homeownership," he noted.

Pollinger added, "Homeownership done responsibly is still one of the best disciplined wealth-building strategies, and there is much more data available for homebuyers than there was five years ago to help them make an informed decision about a home purchase."

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