Mortgage Delinquencies: SEE Which Counties Have Been Hit the Hardest (MAP)

Where is the mortgage crisis wracking the most damage? These handy maps, courtesy of the New York Fed, track changes in mortgage delinquency rates by county.

You may not be surprised to see that mortgage delinquencies are getting worse over vast swaths of the country. But the year-over-year delinquency numbers -- the first chart below -- point to heavy concentration of late in the West, followed by a streak of improvements in the Midwest that trickle away as you head East. In almost all parts of California, Washington and Oregon, delinquencies are far worse than they were a year ago.

Disturbingly, there are only a handful of counties across the nation where mortgage delinquencies are actually improving over last year. (Kudos to Beaverhead, Montana and Red River, Texas!)

The New York Fed's website, which also tracks other measures of consumer credit, including auto loans, student loans, and bank loans, is intended to help "government agencies, community groups, commercial institutions and other practitioners better understand, monitor and respond to local conditions associated with foreclosures and credit and mortgage delinquencies."

To see how your area is faring, check out the map below. (NOTE: The New York Fed's map has full data on each county. Check it out here.)

In the below map, red indicates counties where delinquencies have worsened, green indicates areas where conditions have improved, and the gray shading indicates areas where there has been no change.

The second-quarter numbers in the chart below are even more devastating news for California. In fact, the map shows that almost all of the most severe delinquency rates are concentrated in California and Florida. (Check out the more detailed version of this map here)

Comments

[William50]

A way, a real way, a way that would not hurt American homeowners but would harm the bottom line of bankers across the world is this. Our government states that we are in a financial mess caused by banks over inflating home values for the last thirty years. To solve this problem the following will take place on 010120010, mortgage rates will be cut in half, no lower then prime on all home loans weather they are in default or not and the value of every home will be cut by one third across the nation and one half in the hardest hit areas.
The real, not a federal money mill outcome will be billions of real dollars from workers freed up for this economy, thus creating jobs, the foreclosure rate will fall because people will be able to afford the real value of the home and banks while hating the loss of free money will still be strong.
A real answer to America's problems...
middle america 2010
Casey

[ringo3khan]

I wonder if anyone else noticed that there's a striking corealation between the counties worst hit and those with the highest number of UFO sightings! And there's an even stronger corealtion between the border counties with the highest foreclosure rates and their relative proximity to underground UFO bases in Mexico.

Very strange.

[nexxtep54]

It would be interesting to see a global map of mortgage delinquencies to add a little perspective to this one.

[Rentug]

Obama needs to carry out more reform. He needs to get things done instead of just talking and planning because his voters are becoming impatient and the robber barons are at it again.

Good articles: http://pie.im/af30

2 party system gives no results.

[Playin Possum]

Hmmm... Delinquencies continue to plague counties with people and miss counties with cows... It's a cow-plot...

[senorlou]

LOL!

[tucsoncindy]

Frighting!!!

[ILuvBubbles]

FOR SALE - America, low mileage, one owner, short sale. Want last! ----------­----------­--> China

[yakmeat]

Regarding my previous posting:

The map does have color gradients, with lighter or darker shades of red and green implying "worse" or "better", so some overall trends can be found. Still, without referring to the data behind the maps it is hard to quantify exactly what the map is saying. To their credit, HuffPo did provide a link to this data.

[yakmeat]

These maps are not of much use. With no definition of "better" or "worse", they cannot quantify what they're attempting to illustrate. If a county had 400 foreclosures last year, and had 399 this year, that is "better" but barely.

In theory, a grey county could mean either that there were no foreclosures there both this year and last, or that there were 1000 foreclosures this year and last. No change. But no change from what?

A green county that had fewer foreclosures this year could have had 100% of all mortgages in foreclosure last year, and thus had none left to foreclose on this year. Fewer foreclosures. But fewer from what?

[HmblDog]

aren't numbers wonderful?

[land2341]

I agree that these data are not only not really demonstrative of anything, they are outright misleading.

Without a good legend for explanation of the data and without information on how this data was gathered, it must all be taken with a grain of salt. Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

Someone define how you quantified "worsening"........

[ibsteve2u]

I think you'd have to have an overlay of population densities to get a good picture.

The reality is that wherever people live, the greed of the Republicans has hit home.

[martin2]

This did not happen all by itself but was done by big time crooks who are so big they
can not be punished. If we don't do so we are going down.

[Pennsanic]

I think we're already going down, sadly.

[RobinL]

True---all too true! The Banks are the biggest thieves of all time. Legalized robbery.

[Joseph Joyal]

The Fed said the recession is over right? And the pay czar is approving multi million dollar pay days for companies that got our tax dolloars to stay a float.
This just proves that D.C. is out of touch with the rest of the country.
Unemployment keeps going up and the President want to extend unemployment benefits is stead of fixing the broken system that allows our jobs to be exported.
The Fed wants to accept a new lower standard of living and unemployment at 10% as the norm because it helps his buddies at the banks and big businesses.
H Ross Perot warned of all this almost 20 years ago.

[Carolab]

So very nice to see the FED is tracking how much trouble we are all in -- but where in the h*ll are the numbers on how they spent the trillions of OUR tax dollars?

[RationalAgent]

We can't allow the fed to be audited or questioned, as that would lead to monetary and economic instability. (sarcasm)

[Furby2]

And never mind auditing or questioning the recipients of bail out funds, they're not talking either.

[impressiveprogressive]

I always find these map breakdowns very intriguing.