35 Counties in USA Have Half the Foreclosures — and Boy Are We One of Them

USA Today (which appeared outside my hotel room door) has a very arresting graphic today showing that Most foreclosures pack into a few counties.

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More than half of the nation's foreclosures last year took place in 35 counties, a sign that the financial crisis devastating the national economy may have begun with collapsing home loans in only a few corners of the country.

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13 Responses to 35 Counties in USA Have Half the Foreclosures — and Boy Are We One of Them

  1. Joe says:

    It hasn’t been much of a secret that the foreclosure earthquakes have epicenters in both California and Florida. It’s where there has been a quick explosion of growth and, at least in California’s case, a fairly high cost of living. The question is what do we do about it now?

  2. michael says:

    Believe it or not, I’m actually working on that. But it’s too speculative to discuss in public for now.

  3. Adam says:

    Hmm, I wonder how this works out as a forclosure rate based on number of properties in the county, rather than as a raw number?

  4. dilbert dogbert says:

    Why do all those micro counties seem to be east of the 100th meridian? From the look of that map you could almost spit across most of them in the midwest.
    We are in escrow on a house in california the was listed a year ago for twice our offer in February.
    Yikes! That has got to smart for BofA. It is a good deal for us but someone’s dreams went down the tubes.

  5. LACJ says:

    Adam:

    If you click through, the language is a little unclear, so I can understand your confusion, but it is a number based on foreclosures per ‘000s of ‘households’. So it is not raw numbers.

    What can be done? Well, it is a tough situation, but off the top of my head, aggressive government investigation of the mortgage originators for any type of fraud, (for instance, the mortgage originator using the same assessor who always just happens to come up with high assessments), and reassessment of massive numbers of mortgages by judicial fiat. The GOP will scream of course but they are powerless.

    I have a friend in the LA area who is in a difficult but not horrible position, down payment is gone, but property values have stayed stable in that area and the reset is not due anytime soon. I advised to check out the origination process, and if there is anything that looks the least bit suspicious, call the bank and threaten to file suit for fraud. I have zero knowledge of this area of law, but I would still suspect a savvy person could force a
    bank to come up with a solution.

    Sorry, I guess assessor should be appraiser. Like I said, zero knowledge.

    Dilbert: Your mention of someone else’s dreams is what pisses me off the most. People who were clueless about the industry but worked hard to save their money and maintained their credit rating are getting screwed. That is sad, and also very damaging to the nation. These are people that are trying to build something, and the ‘system’, so to speak, is screwing them over. I realize there are speculators as well, but there are a lot of regular people involved.

  6. LACJ says:

    Michael, are you aware of this error? I have been getting it pretty regularly, although the comments do post eventually.

    “Can’t use an undefined value as an ARRAY reference at plugins/GoogleRank.pl line 87.”

    Just FYI

  7. Michael says:

    Yes, and I’ve been trying to debug it. It is erratic, which makes it hard. At present I believe I’ve disabled all the calls to that plugin, so it should stop. (But I also lost that functionality.)

  8. Adam says:

    ah, sorry, I missed the “per 1000 households”.

  9. LACJ says:

    Hey Adam, “Number per” is like, totally wrong terminology, I am pretty sure. I bet that is what threw you, as it threw me, or at least something threw me initially. Not that I know exactly how to express their meaning clearly…

    Jeez now I am unsure. Is this terminology proper or no? It is USAToday after all…

  10. Scott says:

    Yea, I fell for the same thing, I was to quick to point the finger at these areas for the mess the housing industry has caused and skipped right over the per 1000 households. Anyway, it’s still safe to assume the one “corner” which is solely responsible for the downfall is called wall street.

    Scott
    Philadelphia Wedding Photographer

  11. It seems like the recession is at the bottom now. We should see some improvement soon enough. Just be strong and patient.

  12. elottery says:

    Any chance of an update on this blog. Some great stats, but old now. How about a 2010 update?

  13. Gun Scopes says:

    I’d love to see an update on this as well, if you have any it would be great to put an edit to this blog post and make a completely new blog post with the new information – otherwise thanks again for this!

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