Foreclosures Spread As Unemployment Rises

July 30th, 2009

The foreclosure crisis has entered a new phase. It's spreading beyond the wreckage of the housing bubble to metro areas in Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arkansas, Illinois, and South Carolina where unemployment is rising, according to RealtyTrac’s Midyear 2009 Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report released this morning.

California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona continue to have the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. But some parts of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and California are seeing improvement, the report said. “While some of the markets that had the highest saturation of foreclosures over the past few years have seen declining rates, new markets like Provo, Utah, and Boise, Idaho, have seen large increases,” James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac said in a prepared statement. “As unemployment rates increase in different parts of the country, it’s very likely that we’ll see similar patterns develop elsewhere.”

Unfortunately, the loan modifications being encouraged by the Obama Administration are being severely outpaced by new foreclosure starts. This graphic from the Center For Responsible Lending tells the story. The blue line represents the number of modifications. The yellow bars indicate the loans that are more than 60-days delinquent, and the red bars represent foreclosure starts.