"Mortgage Meltdown..." "Foreclosures Rates Skyrocketing..." "Subprime Nightmare!"

Like Chicken Little running around screaming "The sky is falling!" the current media attention on foreclosures is overwhelmingly pessimistic. The media suggests that foreclosures everywhere are hitting record highs. Realtors and consumers alike are getting anxious with these doom and gloom headlines screaming at them each week. So how bad is it really? What is the state of foreclosures today in Washington and how does that compare to national statistics? Is it better or worse than it was five or even ten years ago.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) which tracks data on 85 percent of all mortgages in the US (approximately 44 million) the current foreclosure rate for Washington Stat as of June 2007 is .49 percent, whereas nationally it is 1.40 percent. This means that Washington is currently doing 65 percent better better than the national rate.

The national average has increased in recent years but those numbers are being driven by only a handful of states according to Doug Duncan, MBA's Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of Research and Business Development.

"What continues to drive the national numbers, however, is what is happening in the states of California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. Were it not for the increases in foreclosure starts in those four states, we would have seen a nationwide drop in the rate of foreclosure filings. Thirty four states had decreases in their rates of new foreclosures and the increases were very modest in the states with increases, other than those four," Duncan said.

Washington State is currently in slightly better shape foreclosure-wise than it was ten years ago, while nationally the foreclosure rates are worse. Looking at the second quarter in 1997 Washington foreclosures were at .50 percent which was 54 percent better than the national rate of 1.08 percent in 1997.

For the past 10 years Washington has remained well under national average and in recent years the gap between national foreclosure rates and Washington's foreclosure rates has increased. Washington foreclosure rates are in fact trending down over the past 10 years while, even with all its ups and downs, the national foreclosure trend has remained fairly constant.