Initially I saw the map and got excited because the zip code I am watching (92592) was in red, yipee!! Then I read the legend and the colors are based on the total numbers of foreclosures in a zip code, not a percentage of foreclosures to properties or population. Perris wasn’t even red and that is the highest rate per 1,000 households in the state last month, made national headlines. That wan’t so much a foreclosure map as it was a population map, many of the zips in red are the most populated zips. From that map, Temecula 92592 (population 56,000) has more forclosures than Temecula 92590 (population 3,446). And Murrieta 92563 (population 22,458) was also red. So that must mean that 92592 and 92563 have about the same amount of stress on R/E and 92590 has more stability. What it means is that 92563 has twice the forclosure rate of 92592 and doesn’t tell me jack about 92590. These were the first four comparisons I made and since it was all useless info, so I stopped there. As Espn’s Chirs Berman says, “lets go inside the numbers.”
It is obvious that forclosures are on the rise and prices are falling but do not draw any conclusions about trends based on that p.o.s. map. Come to think of it i bet there are more forclosures in California than Iowa, More in New York, than Rhode Island, maybe I should make a map.
