Wall Street Journal posts California delinquency and foreclosure stats

Posted on May 22, 2008 by David Winton

A recent blog post by the Wall Street Journal includes a revealing and useful map on the delinquency, foreclosure, subprime and various other stats from metro areas around the country.   Find it here.   Actually, when I first looked at it, I thought it was California-only data, but that's probably because of the top 13 delinquency rates in the US, 6 of them--including 4 of the top 5 spots--are here in California. 

Against a national average of 3.86%, the winners are...

  • Merced, California at 9.78%.
  • Stockton, California at 8.73, and
  • Riverside, California at 8.03.
This map is an interactive sort of thing, and there are other specific mortgage-related maps that you can play around with.  For instance, want to know which state's mortgage brokers made the most subprime loans during the "boom?"  It's there.  And...Yes.  California wins again.  29.4% of all real property secured loans made made in the state in 2006 were subprime-- "hard money" as the industry refers to them.  Here's a direct link.  What's really frightening is the dollar volume:  $155 billion. 

The only conclusion you can really reach in looking at this material is that it's a bloodbath, and it's worse in California--by a vast margin--than anywhere else in the country.

What I have to wonder is who was the genius who came up with the idea of speculating with $155 billion in junior deeds of trust in markets like Merced, Stocton and Riverside?  Where was the adult supervision?  Didn't anyone learn anything at all from the S&L crisis?  Or, the dot com fiasco? 

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