Fri, June 06, 2008
Cool Boston Fed Tool Maps MA Foreclosures
Elsewhere I've written about the localized nature of housing markets. I just discovered that there's a very cool resource at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank website that lets you map foreclosure and subprime mortgage exposure for each MA city and town.
The Boston Fed’s web resource displays foreclosure rates and subprime mortgage origination rate data for all of Massachusetts. Not surprisingly, the areas suffering the most tend to be lower-income towns, but without a doubt you’d need to look at an even finer level of resolution to see which neighborhoods are affected. Expect housing prices to struggle the most in places where there is a significant amount of distressed property on the market.
Even in the hardest-hit Massachusetts towns, the foreclosure rates have not reached the worst levels seen in the US; in Ohio and Michigan the average foreclosure rate is approaching 4%. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s reported that in the first quarter, 2.5% of all loans being serviced by member banks were in foreclosure.