Foreclosure Roundup

The Baltimore Sun reports foreclosures are up 150% in Maryland this year:

Lenders were trying to foreclose on more than 13,000 homeowners at the end of last year, up about 150 percent from a year earlier, the Mortgage Bankers Association said yesterday. That's the biggest 12-month increase since the trade group began tracking the state numbers in 1979.

The Washington Post reports that the foreclosure rate is double that of last year around the nation with the Washington region well below the national foreclosure rate:

The crisis in home lending reached another milestone with the report from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which said that 2.04 percent of outstanding mortgages were in foreclosure in the fourth quarter of last year, an all-time high. A year earlier, 1.19 percent of loans were in foreclosure.

In the Washington region, foreclosure rates were below the national level: In the District, 1 percent of loans were in foreclosure; in Virginia, 1.01 percent; and in Maryland, 1.22 percent.

Over 30% of the nation's foreclosures in just California and Florida alone.