Reply #16: Foreclosures: Salt Lake hardest hit in mortgage crisis

[Demeter]

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_14980974?IADID=Search-www.sltrib.com-www.sltrib.com

When it comes to foreclosures, Salt Lake City is the worst of the worst.

The metro area had the largest percentage increase in foreclosure filings the past year among more than 50 communities hardest hit by the nation's foreclosure crisis, a new report shows.

Owners of 5,155 local properties received a foreclosure-related notice in the first quarter, 101 percent higher than the same period in 2009, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosures nationally. In the U.S., foreclosure filings rose only 16 percent. Many of the other metro areas with high levels of distressed properties actually saw their foreclosure rates fall from the super-high levels of last year.

As for the rate of foreclosures-related filings, one in every 77 of all housing units in the Salt Lake area, or 1.3 percent, received a notice in the first three months of the year, RealtyTrac said. That's the 35th-highest rate of filings among all 206 metro areas in the RealtyTrac report, up from No. 62 in the first quarter 2009 and No. 107 in the first quarter 2008.

Provo-Orem was No. 34, while Ogden-Clearfield was No. 53.

RealtyTrac said Salt Lake's growing foreclosure-filings rate demonstrates how the problem has spread in a big way from cities in California, Arizona and Nevada into other once-booming areas. Utah, which in the mid-2000s had one of the most robust economies and lowest foreclosure rates now has the fifth-highest rate of foreclosure filings of all states, behind only Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California....GEE, MICHIGAN DOESN'T MAKE THE LIST ANYMORE? NOR OHIO?