A Look Inside The Housing Crisis

The Cleveland Federal Reserve just posted a series of maps on its web site detailing the impact of the Housing Crisis on Cleveland, which is one of the hardest hit cities out there.

Chart 1 shows that an astounding number of loans are in REO status. Three zip codes encompassing East Cleveland, Cleveland and Cuyahoga Heights have anywhere from 3.3% to 8% of loans in this status. I guess the Cleveland Fed couldn't find a color darker than red to give us more granularity than that.



Map 2 shows the number of homes in foreclosure:



Again the same zip codes and up to 15% in foreclosure or bankruptcy.

The last map shows the number of speculators in the market:



Anywhere from 27-40% of the homes in these zip codes are owned by speculators.

The scary thing is that this data is as of January, so it is probably worse than the charts show.

You can look at the original publications here at the Cleveland Fed.