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Foreclosures, by county
Here is the accompanying article by Matt Yglesias.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 8, 2008 at 11:43 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
Interesting how they cluster around the main population centers!
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Jan 8, 2008 12:09:22 PM
What's far more interesting is the significant changes at state lines: Why does Kentucky have a significantly lower foreclosure rate than Ohio, Indiana, or Tennessee? Why do Mississippi and Alabama have noticeably lower rates than Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida? Is there a difference in state lending laws, or just in state reporting laws?
Posted by: Anthony at Jan 8, 2008 12:31:08 PM
Looks like two different phenomena to me: coasts & cities where properties were over-valued, and the rust belt where land is cheap (dirt cheap? hehe) but people lost jobs.
I'm not sure what to make of TN & AR.
Posted by: efp at Jan 8, 2008 1:14:33 PM
So what are, say, the average rates over the last 10 years for comparison?
Posted by: dzot at Jan 8, 2008 2:49:47 PM
...the only thing that doesn't make sense to me is the crazy high rate in Tennessee and Arkansas. The other areas are mostly portions that were heavily developed over the past few years. We've done a fair amount of planning in tennessee, but that state-line divide is the most intriguing. That swath on the east side of colorado is interesting too...I guess that's just on the east side of the rockies (yep).
Posted by: shawn at Jan 8, 2008 3:15:36 PM
Good lord, Tennessee looks awful. As does Ohio.
There must indeed be some state-law or state-reporting catch here.
(And when did Yglesias become an economics expert?)
Posted by: Anderson at Jan 8, 2008 3:15:56 PM
The map also closely matches the location of concentrations of home buyers with weak credit scores found in the appendix of
http://www.federalreserve.gov/Pubs/Bulletin/2007/pdf/hmda06final.pdf
Posted by: tedm at Jan 8, 2008 3:17:51 PM
My guess for Kentucky is that there are no major cities there. Tennessee at least has Memphis and Nashville which look like the worst hit regions and likewise Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati etc. Most of Kentucky seems to be just far enough from the surrounding urban centers or cheap enough to be relatively unaffected, similarly all of Virginia's foreclosure hotspots are in the DC metropolitan area although I know there is a significant and growing commuter population that lives further out in Virginia and even West Virginia.
Like election maps though the relative areas of the states mask the problems, Connecticut looks almost as bad a Florida. There is no bright red visible but all of the state looks to be >= 0.9% and likewise Massachusetts except the extreme Northwestern corner and New Jersey. So it's just not the high population growth areas, Massachusetts and Connecticut lag the national growth rate but have relatively high existing populations.
Posted by: Sseziwa Mukasa at Jan 8, 2008 3:42:42 PM
I don't know if it's a factor, but Tennessee has no state income tax; a powerful incentive to create the impression one lives there. Northwest GA and AR have a lot of vacation homes, and I know there's a lot of speculation in the Las Vegas and Miami areas. Did the article include stats on how many of the foreclosures are on owner occupied properties?
Posted by: J at Jan 8, 2008 4:25:51 PM
just another factor I believe that is leading to the fall of America....hope 2 die
Posted by: rawdawgbuffalo at Jan 8, 2008 7:44:05 PM
The foreclosure processes is of two types. There is Judicial Foreclosure and Strength of Sale foreclousre
The foremer takes up to a year the latter 6 to 8 weeks. So state by state comparisons in the short run are of limited use. Also, the Florida numbers are understated--many more
are in limbo as the courts in Miami-Dade are notoriously courrupt and inefficient. One judge has 2000
foreclosures on his desk....This is going to get really ugly......
Posted by: Robert C at Jan 8, 2008 9:29:09 PM
The foreclosure processes is of two types. There is Judicial Foreclosure and Strength of Sale foreclousre
The foremer takes up to a year the latter 6 to 8 weeks. So state by state comparisons in the short run are of limited use. Also, the Florida numbers are understated--many more
are in limbo as the courts in Miami-Dade are notoriously courrupt and inefficient. One judge has 2000
foreclosures on his desk....This is going to get really ugly......
Posted by: Robert C at Jan 8, 2008 9:29:19 PM
Whoo hoo! We're number 1!
I recall reading something in the Las Vegas Review Journal about hpw most of the homes in foreclosure here NOT owner-occupied, and a lot of them (almost half?) are sitting vacant.
Las Vegas housing prices roughly doubled in a five year period and a lot of people got into flipping houses to get rich quick. The last wave of would-be flippers got caught holding the bag.
Posted by: Jacqueline at Jan 8, 2008 10:08:42 PM
I'm going to admit it. I see good news in this, personally.
(1) My house is paid for, and since my wife's family has lived 6 generations on the same block, we aren't going anywhere. The property value is only of interest to my heirs. But my taxes went up 50% at the last assessment -- property taxes are my real risk, not property values.
(2) My oldest daughter (age 25, a schoolteacher) is priced out of the market.
(3) If the market comes down, my daughters will no longer be priced out of it. If it doesn't come down, there will be pressure for Dad to subsidize -- who doesn't want their grandchildren to live in a good neighborhood?
So, it's quite likely that my net worth would be better off with a substantial decline in housing prices. [well, so long as we don't have a severe recession due to a credit meltdown]
There have to be a lot of people out there who are in the same boat.
Posted by: ZBicyclist at Jan 9, 2008 12:22:25 AM
The high foreclosure rates in TN, esp. in the Memphis area where I live, don't make much sense to me.
Unlike the coasts, the high foreclosure rates in TN couldn't driven by the collapse of the housing bubble, because there hasn't been any bubble here. Insofar as TN is representative of national trends, there's something else going on.
Posted by: Brock at Jan 9, 2008 6:46:09 AM
I'll also note that DeSoto County, MS, just south of the TN-MS border from Memphis, is the lightest color on the map, while Shelby County (Memphis) is the darkest. This in spite of the fact that DeSoto County has been one of the highest-growth areas in the metropolitan area.
Posted by: Brock at Jan 9, 2008 6:53:03 AM
"Interesting how they cluster around the main population centers!"
You know, at first I just assumed this was sarcasm. Then in the middle of the night, it occurred to me that the map is based on percentage (within the county, I presume), so there wasn't any obvious reason why the darker spots should cluster around population centers.
If I think of northern Michigan, for instance, there are plenty of poor people, as a percentage of the population. (Where was that great web page with all the stats broken down by zip code?) Why is the rate of foreclosure there so low?
My first guess is simply that the of home ownership turnover is slower there. But if that's the case, doesn't that suggest the map itself is badly flawed? It seems like it should be foreclosures as a percentage of active home mortgages, rather than housing units.
Posted by: Sol at Jan 9, 2008 8:46:39 AM
According to this chart at CNN Money, although the TN foreclosure rate is high, as reflected on this map, the foreclosure rate in TN actually fell 17% from Feb. 2006 - Feb. 2007. For comparison, Florida foreclosures were up by 91% in that period, and California foreclosures were up by 78%.
So the high foreclosure rates in TN do not appear to be part of the bicoastal trend. It's just business as usual in TN.
Posted by: Brock at Jan 9, 2008 9:56:23 AM
Brock: "The high foreclosure rates in TN, esp. in the Memphis area where I live, don't make much sense to me."
This article notes the foreclosure "epidemic in Frayser", a Memphis suburb.
Saralyn Williams, program coordinator for the MemphisDEBT Collaborative, explains that:
"title-loan lenders and 'payday' lenders, whose exorbitant interest rates can trap customers in a cycle of mounting debt, are prevalent in the area. ... Predatory lending really is a big thing in Memphis"
The ABC's of dollars and cents
"Local officials say Memphis' high poverty rate and nation leading incidence of bankruptcy make their city a hotbed of predatory lending."
"DON'T BORROW TROUBLE" ANTI-PREDATORY LENDING CAMPAIGN
Posted by: John Dewey at Jan 9, 2008 10:33:18 AM
brock: "I'll also note that DeSoto County, MS, just south of the TN-MS border from Memphis, is the lightest color on the map, while Shelby County (Memphis) is the darkest."
It's interesting that you used the terms "lighest color" and "darkest" to describe DeSoto and Shelby counties. DeSoto County's population is 11.4% black. Shelby County is 51.3% black.
According to a study by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), African-Americans are about 3 times as likely as whites to be issued a high cost home purchase loan. They are about 1.7 times as likely as whites to be issued a high cost home refinance loan. ACORN's analysis of home mortgage lending in 172 American cities revealed that "those racial disparities persist even among homeowners of the same income level."
Foreclosure Exposure: a study of racial and income disparities
Posted by: John Dewey at Jan 9, 2008 1:34:18 PM
Sol wrote: "If I think of northern Michigan, for instance, there are plenty of poor people, as a percentage of the population. (Where was that great web page with all the stats broken down by zip code?) Why is the rate of foreclosure there so low?"
The overall rate of real estate turnover may be lower. (e.g. % of homeowners who have been in their home less than, say, 5 years)
There may be less hope of appreciation, so there was less speculation.
The local banks may be more likely to be holding mortgages rather than selling them. This may make them more patient / more likely to do workouts.
Mortgage brokers, in their rapid expansion phase, didn't locate here because they didn't see the market.
Just speculating.
Maybe it's the strictness of mortgage broker licensing in Tennessee vs. Kentucky that explains the foreclosure differences?
Posted by: ZBicyclist at Jan 9, 2008 2:07:02 PM
The federal government has been on the warpath to get more mortgages into the hands of blacks and Hispanics since the early 1990s by suing financial institutions for discrimination if their credit assessment methods lead to "disparate impact." Back then, the default rates for minorities were the same for all races, suggesting that the financials markets were correctly assessing risk in a non-racially biased fashion. Now, the default rates are much higher for NAMs (Non-Asian Minorities), implying that government pressure caused more lending to minorities than colorblind analysis would have permitted.
Mission accomplished.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jan 9, 2008 8:54:38 PM
Steve Sailer: "implying that government pressure caused more lending to minorities than colorblind analysis would have permitted."
Makes sense to me.
Posted by: John Dewey at Jan 10, 2008 7:12:54 AM
After turning himself in to authorities, 20-year-old David Kernell, son of Democratic Representative of Tennessee, Mike Kernell, is facing five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. He will be charged for hacking into GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin’s personal E-mail account. It is alleged that after reading the contents, he took a screen shot and posted it on a public Web site. The contents included email addresses, pictures, birthdays, and phone numbers of family members and more. To top it off, after resetting the password, he also posted the new one he had created, which allowed others to access the E-mail account themselves. Nonetheless, Kernell pleaded not guilty to the charges. Facing a $250,000 fine is intense. At $1,500 per loan, it would take about 167 individual payday loans to cover that outrageous expense.
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Posted by: Payday Loan Advocate at Oct 16, 2008 4:28:55 AM
Take these numbers with a grain of salt. The numbers are biased towards urban areas because the sources are more likely to get data from major cities than rural areas. See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95431537
Posted by: Fair and Unbiased at Dec 22, 2008 9:49:20 AM
