foreclosure list

The worst of the fallout from the burst housing bubble continues to be highly localized. Metros in California, Nevada, and Florida have the most troubled housing markets, according to our new Housing-Mortgage Stress Index. Nearly half of the metros on the list—nine of the top 20, including all five of the top five—are in California: Stockton, Modesto, Vallejo-Fairfield, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, and Bakersfield-Delano, along with Fresno, Visalia-Porterville, Sacramento and Salinas. Six Florida metros make the list—Miami, Orlando, Port St. Lucie, Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, Lakeland-Winter Haven, and Palm Bay-Melbourne. Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, Phoenix,  Provo, Utah, and Greely, Colorado, round out the 20 most stressed housing markets.

At the height of the boom, real estate, housing, and construction-related industries accounted for more than a quarter of the entire economies of Las Vegas, Miami, and Phoenix and 30 percent of Orlando’s, as I note in The Great Reset. It was like a giant Ponzi scheme, fueled entirely by debt. The hardest-hit Sun Belt metros lacked the underlying economic heft to support their skyrocketing housing values; some of them may never recover.

If we look at just large metros—those with more than 1 million people—Tampa, Detroit, Atlanta, San Diego, Jacksonville, Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach, Chicago and L.A., show high levels of housing-mortgage stress, along with the five noted above—Riverside, Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix, Sacramento, and Miami.

The Housing-Mortgage Stress Index shows the U.S. metros whose housing markets—and homeowners—face the highest levels of stress and danger of foreclosure and falling prices. The index is based on three variables.

Gallery: Worst Real Estate Cities

Time to add “able to save homes from foreclosure with a single issue” to Superman’s already massive list of superpowers—that’s just what happened to one family in Baltimore who was on the verge of losing their home. While packing up their possessions, the family discovered an issue of Action Comics number one, the first comic to ever feature Superman.



They then contacted an expert from New York’s ComicConnect.com, who told them the issue might fetch up to $250,000, far more than enough to save their home. The company owner called the bank and asked them to postpone the foreclosure to give the family time to sell the book in auction and repay their mortgage. “You couldn’t have asked for a happier ending,” he said, “Superman saved the day.”



[Image courtesy of Flickr user Fonzie's cousin.]

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