Oregon insulated from national foreclosure problems

Northwest Foreclosure & Real Estate News

With home foreclosures up 57 percent over the past year, everyone is talking about what repossessions will do to the economy.

Oregon and the Northwest, however, are in better shape than other regions. New data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that fewer homes in Oregon, Washington or Idaho were in foreclosure at the end of 2007 than across the nation as a whole.

Oregon's foreclosures in December were actually higher than its neighbors to the north and east, but still far below California. Oregon had 303 foreclosures, or 0.21 per thousand homes in the state. That compares with fewer than 0.19 foreclosures per thousand for Washington, and 0.16 for Idaho.

California, which had almost 1.55 houses per thousand in foreclosure at the end of 2007, was one of the hot spots pushing the national figure to 0.43 per thousand.