Premier Mortgage Group

Mortgage interest rates improved slightly despite limited new economic data.  Economic data of note included January Existing Home Sales, which were slightly weaker than expected.  January New Home Sales, though, were slightly stronger than expected.  The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index increased to 75.3, its highest level since February of 2011.  The Treasury auctioned $99 billion in 2 Year Notes, 5 Year Notes, and 7 Year Notes, which were met with reasonably strong demand.  In Europe, the EU forecast that EU GDP would fall by 0.3% versus the previous forecast of 0.5% growth.  The United Kingdom reported that Q4 GDP fell 0.2% from the third quarter and German GDP fell 0.2% in the fourth quarter as well.  It appears that Greece will receive its bailout funds to avoid default next month but markets are concerned that Greece will be able to fulfill its austerity measures.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently at 12,977, up almost 30 points on the week.  Crude oil spot prices are currently over $108 per barrel, up almost $5 per barrel on the week.  The Dollar weakened versus the Euro and strengthened versus the Yen on the week.

Next week look toward Tuesday’s Durable Goods Orders, Wednesday’s second look at Q4 GDP, and Thursday’s Jobless Claims, Personal Income and Outlays, and ISM Manufacturing Index as potential market moving events.

Markets are quiet, volatility gone, waiting for something to happen. Not calm, plenty tense, a lot happening but not concluding.

The overriding influence near-term: The Battle of 1370. What, Europe again? The English and French refighting some unpleasantness between Crecy and Agincourt?

Nah. Every stock trader on the planet is mesmerized by S&P500 1370. Go above it, and stocks should rocket if only because so many buy the chart. One problem: the S&P since mid-December has already run straight from 1200, and been stuck between 1345 and 1365 for three weeks. As vulnerable on downside as likely to explode upward.

Fed-managed long-term rates no longer react to anything: the 10-year T-note since the end of October has traded 90% of the time between 1.90% and 2.05%.

Europe has pulled back from another Greek brink, but not resolved a thing. Austerity in the big dominoes — Italy, Spain, and France — has not begun, each promising fiscal tightening about 4% of GDP this year. In US equivalent, imagine a $600 billion tax-hike spending-cut combination during the onset of new recession.

The ECB will next week expand bank rescue funding toward infinity. However, the ECB firehose will have little economic effect, just preventing weak banks from failing, strong banks disinterested in risk-taking, no matter how much cash the ECB sprays.

So, the world admiring its navel, what’s up with the long-slow-roller, housing?

Finance types have amused themselves in the new year by announcing housing recovery. Merrill Lynch’s newest report concludes: “The housing recovery would support an even bigger commitment to equities in our portfolios.” Right. Merrill would find sunrise or Joe Stalin’s birthday good reasons to buy more stock.

Home sales data had been talked this winter into optimistic anticipation, and the flat reality misreported: a ballyhooed but minor gain in January sales of exiting homes was reversed by a downward revision for December. Sales of new homes were just the reverse: off .9% in January, revised up a little in December. And this winter was one of the mildest in a long time. New applications for purchase loans have been unchanged all through the winter into February.

Home prices have flattened. The FHFA Home Price Index wobbled weakly through 2011, and recovered in December to a decline of .8% from where it started. The Newest Case-Shiller data is a hair weaker, through last November off 3.7% year-to-date, the last two months showing new declines in 19 of 20 cities. Stock hawkers see these trends as a happy turn to price stability. If I have been dragged to the bottom of a swimming pool, holding my breath, is my situation stable?

There are genuinely positive trends, and one big puzzle. The true positives include some big drops in overall mortgage delinquency: in the last year, 18.9% in Nevada, 14.3% in Michigan, 21% in California, and 24.5% in Arizona. Total mortgages delinquent or in foreclosure have dropped by almost 900,000 in the last year.

Don’t get carried away just yet. Nationally, 12.3% of loans are still delinquent. 3,856,000 loans are 90+ days late or in foreclosure, down only 8% last year (LPS).

The puzzle: a nationwide drop in listed inventory for sale, down 21.5% last year, 11.5% of that in December alone. This is National Association of Realtors data, which given both hands and a mirror could not count both sides of its fanny and get to “two.” However, the decline is real and large, and normally a precursor to rising prices. This time we can’t tell how much is instead due to exhausted sellers, others fearful of discounts too deep, or with too little equity to hire a broker and have a down payment for the next home. We’ll hope, and see.

On the public policy front, the Federal government immobile and annoyed by Fed pleas for housing help, some states are moving. Florida has legislation pending which would make foreclosure easier. In the seventh year of fiddling and loan-mitigation pretense, there is no better sign than local governments wanting to get on with it. That’s a true marker of moving into the back half of this mess.

Poor graphic, but great data. The sort is based on column three, “Non-curr %”, highest top left, carrying to center column and then right. “Non-Curr %” includes all loans late to any degree.

Mortgage interest rates increased slightly as economic data was generally positive.  December Business Inventories, January Capacity Utilization, January Housing Starts, the February Philadelphia Fed Business Index, and January Leading Economic Indicators were all in line with expectations.  Economic data better than expected included January Retail Sales excluding automobiles, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Index, the NAHB Housing Index for February, January Building Permits, and weekly jobless claims.  Weekly jobless claims fell 13k to 348k claims, its lowest level in four years.  Reports weaker than expected included January Retail Sales and January Industrial Production.  Also of note, the Consumer Price Index for January increased 0.2% on expectations that it would increase by 0.3%.  Excluding the food and energy components, core CPI increased by 0.2%, in line with expectations.  Also, markets increasingly believe that Greece and European officials will agree to a bailout deal on Monday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently at 12,928, up almost 130 points on the week.  Crude oil spot prices are currently at just over $103 per barrel, up over $4 per barrel on the week.  The Dollar strengthened versus both the Yen and Euro on the week.

Next week look toward Wednesday’s Existing Home Sales, Thursday’s weekly jobless claims, and Friday’s New Home Sales as potential market moving events.  U.S. markets are closed Monday in observance of Presidents’ Day.

Gradually improving US economic data and a Greek deal of some sort have relieved immediate financial fears, and so bond and mortgage rates have risen.

The rate increase is proportional to the relief. 10-year T-notes have moved from 1.92% to 2.02%, and mortgages from just under 4.00% to just under 4.125%, roughly like your kid’s fever dropping from 105 to 104.5.

However, the kid here is in a lot better shape than the kid in Europe. The most reassuring news here is the up-trend in the small business survey by the NFIB. Although its overall optimism is little better than the bottom of recessions going back 25 years, it has been improving each month since August, and only two months since 2007 have had better readings. The weakest internal component has been sales, now the worry fading fastest.

Another legitimate breakthrough: weekly claims for unemployment insurance have dropped again, to 348,000 last week. Wobbling near 350,000 in the last couple of months has been a straight-line decline from the 400,000+ range of the last two years, and is only about 25,000 weekly above what anyone would consider normal. However, everything about this cycle is so abnormal that nobody knows if normalized layoffs will translate in to normal hiring.

More good news: inflation is not a problem. CPI arrived for January +.2% both overall and core, and in the last year overall +2.3% core and +2.9% overall. The numbers don’t seem to do much for inflation anxiety, most of which is based on conspiracy theories of one kind or another.

With us always is the cooked-books crowd. Nevermind the impossible complexity of getting the dozens of inflation reports from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Commerce Department, and Fed all to tell the same false story. People who believe in rigged reports also invariably believe that government is incompetent; if so, how is a pack of fools to run such an elegant conspiracy?

A branch of this bunch objects to updating the “market basket” of goods and services to reflect current consumption. This subset also loves the horror stories of atypical consumers: a family putting a kid through college feels price pressure that a retired couple does not. There is no arguing with those who want the world never to change. Today, keeping a horse in New York City is unimaginably expensive; 100 years ago in that city a horse was the common possession of a lower-class merchant.

A serious concern, historically, is the tendency of government to print its way out of debt trouble — especially when so many authoritative voices (responsible and not) say that the Fed is “printing money” right now.

Of all the things that I discuss with my ceiling at 3:00AM, US money-printing is the least. For three reasons. The Fed is printing money to replace money that frightened banks and investors are withdrawing and burying in their back yards. If new money is in balance with money withdrawn, no inflation; the new money prevents deflation.

Second, take on faith that the Fed is deadly serious about a 2% target for core inflation. As an institution it saw the 1960s-1980s consequences of “a little inflation,” and it will not repeat — no matter what Left-side economists propose today.

Third… the third reason is so powerful that we will wish it were not there. When the Fed tolerated a little inflation, and it went from 2% to 12%, there was so little debt in the world that its owners could not protect themselves. Too few “bond vigilantes” to form a posse. Today there are mountains of IOUs all over the world. Any effort by any government to inflate its way out of debt will be met by massive selling, and the instantaneous and pre-emptive rocket in rates will demolish the offending economy.

Vigilantes grown to army-size now cause the austerity predicament. Only Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and the UK are in its grip. Italy, Spain, and France have promised austerity but not begun. In the US we have not even promised.

Improving trend in retail sales is now sliding… or just choppy?

If the small business trend is real, and not just getting used to a new and thin normal, the next step will be hiring. I hope, I hope.

Mortgage interest rates were mostly flat on the week as there was limited new economic data for markets to digest.  Of note, December Consumer Credit increased more than expected.  Weekly jobless claims fell by 15k to 358k claims on expectations that claims would increase by 3k.  December Wholesale Inventories increased more than expected and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index fell more than expected.  The December Trade Balance was in line with expectations but the trade deficit increased to a six month high.  The Treasury auctioned $72 billion in 3 Year Notes, 10 Year Notes, and 30 Year Bonds which were met with mixed demand from markets.  Also of note, Greece politicians proposed an austerity plan that cuts 150k jobs, cuts the minimum wage by 20% and cuts medical spending.  It remains to be seen whether the plan is passed into law and whether the European Central Bank and IMF endorse the plan to provide more financial aid to help Greece avoid default.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently at 12,757, down over 100 points on the week.  Crude oil prices are currently at $98.46 per barrel, up slightly on the week.  The Dollar weakened versus the Euro and strengthened versus the Yen on the week.

Next week look toward Tuesday’s Retail Sales, Wednesday’s Industrial production and Capacity Utilization, Thursday’s Housing Starts, weekly jobless claims, Producer Price Index, and Philadelphia Fed Survey, and Friday’s Consumer Price Index as potential market moving events.

The game of Grecian Chicken flaps and clucks on, Greece near default and leaving the euro, which would ruin its economy; and Europe withholding new money until Greece agrees to austerity that will ruin its economy.

The 10-year T-note yield needs no scary help from Europe to stay low. The Fed’s “Operation Twist,” swapping short Treasurys for long ones, has since November 1st kept the 10-year between 1.82% and 2.05%, and mortgages close to 4.00%. Zzzzzzzz.

Economic news didn’t amount to much this week, except the encouraging drop in weekly unemployment insurance claims, now below 375,000, half the worst of 2009.

Public policy follies and heroics dominate everything, economies and markets still in one ICU or another. For slapstick it’s hard to beat the mortgage servicing settlement with states’ attorneys general, a tasteless joke on people in trouble, and housing.

Eighteen months ago state AGs discovered they could hold foreclosures hostage to infinite litigation by accusing servicers of procedural shortcutting — true, but not material error. Servicing banks have bought their way out for $26 billion (0.00251% of mortgages outstanding), which might as well be extracted directly from taxpayers (the banks’ customers will pay) and deposited in the AGs’ re-election campaigns. The only real effect of settlement, and question: now released by the protection payment to AGs, what will be the new volume of foreclosures and how soon?

The second policy matter is genuine good news: clear evidence is mounting that the Fed’s extraordinary interventions are beginning to have effect. The Fed’s rescue measures since 2008 are three times removed (maybe three orders of magnitude) from actual historical experience, supported only by theory… but working.

1. When Lehman failed, the Fed flooded the banking system with reserves, trying to keep credit flowing and to prevent an asset fire-sale — the theoretical should-have-done in 1930, but never actually done. Brief injections at the ’87 stock crash and 9/11 were hardly comparable. The $1 trillion injected in a week after Lehman… did nothing.

2. Four months later the Fed began “quantitative easing,” buying MBS and Treasurys, another $1.2 trillion. QE is the measure that Japan theoretically should have adopted in 1990 but did not. QE1 did knock down mortgage rates, but the idea was to create credit: pull safe investments from the market, and thereby force investors to take risk. Didn’t work. The world went to cash and stayed there through QE2.

3. Beginning in 2011 and through today, the Fed has “walked out the yield curve,” a theoretical antidote to asset deflation described in a Bernanke speech 10 years ago. Translation: after holding cash yields at zero for three years and watching you idiots stay in cash, now we’re telling you we’ll hold them at zero for three more years. If you still stay in cash, we’ll pull more of your safe investments and promise to stay at zero until somebody younger and smarter takes your job or inherits your assets.

This theory-based offensive has opened pot-shot season for every other theorist, and fear, and who-took-my-cheese. Please pay no attention to the inflationists, the shut-the-Feds and gold bugs, and the bond-fund managers and wealthy coupon-clippers who feel entitled to good yield on cash and no-risk investments.

To make some money you’re going to have to take risk. And now we can see the first pin-stripers crawling from muddy bunkers, squinting into sunshine.

Consumer credit since November has rocketed at a 9% annual pace. Bankers in action! Paul Kasriel at Northern Trust has been one of the very few to understand the Fed’s ops, and his newest analysis finds a sudden net increase in bank loans and securities held. Credit! The MBS/10-year spread is the narrowest in a year, fear fading for holding super-low mortgages. Yield hunger has junk bonds in a huge rally, and corporate finance of all kinds is cheap. New home equity lines of credit had rate floors at 5.00% and 6.00%, banks fearful of Fed reversal and rising deposit costs. No more! We see two-year specials just above 2.00%. Even mortgages — halleluiah! — collateral circulation is opening around throttled Fannie and FHA, banks actually making loans.

The Fed set out to cap the 10-year T-note, and capped it has been. Don’t fight Mother Nature.

It’s early, but this is the first solid increase in consumer credit in four years.

Mortgage interest rates were mostly flat week over week despite today’s stronger than expected employment report for January.  The unemployment rate fell to 8.3% on expectations that it would remain unchanged at 8.5%.  Non-farm payrolls increased by 243k on expectations that they would increase by 163k.  Private non-farm payrolls increased by 257k on expectations that they would increase by 170k.  Other economic data stronger than expected included the January ISM Services Sector Index, weekly jobless claims, December Personal Income, and December Construction Spending.  Economic data weaker than expected included December Personal Spending, the January Chicago Purchasing Managers Survey, January Consumer Confidence, and the January ISM Manufacturing Index.  Other news of note included continued negotiations betweenGreeceand creditors regarding its debt curtailment.  Also,Chinareported an unexpected increase in manufacturing.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently at 12,852, up almost 200 points on the week.  Crude oil spot prices are currently just under $97 per barrel, down about $3 per barrel on the week.  The Dollar strengthened versus the Euro and weakened versus the Yen on the week.

Next week look toward Thursday’s weekly jobless claims and Friday’s International Trade report as potential market moving events.

In a double surprise, the job market may at last have begun to revive, but the double-the-forecast, 243,000-job surge in January has done little harm to mortgages. We are still near 4.00%; 10-year T-notes up from 1.82%, but holding nicely at 1.95%.

Ordinarily a payroll jump like this would have killed us, especially in combination with strong results in the two ISM surveys for January: manufacturing to 54.1 from 53.1 in December, and service-sector way up to 56.8 from 52.6 last month. Some of the calm reaction in markets is suspicion — few other data confirm a big economic turn. Europe is a continuing cause of deep anxiety, but quiet this week, nothing but the muffled clanking of picks and shovels in the bottom of its ever-deeper hole.

And housing hangs over everything in the US economy, all measures of prices in continuing decline through December. But, to his great credit, Mr. Obama devoted a speech this week to housing, including new proposals. “This housing crisis struck right at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America: our homes.” Right!

The proposals will be without effect, but that’s not Mr. Obama’s fault. That two years have passed without proposals or priority or even mention, that is his fault, but give him full praise for saying out loud: “Hey, there’s an elephant in this living room!” Why there are no effective proposals, and why it’s beyond even the President’s power to put them forward is a tale of human nature. We know perfectly well what to do, but several things in ourselves and our political process prevent action.

Federal housing finance agencies created in the Great Depression were by far the most effective aspect of the New Deal, perhaps more so than all the rest put together. Aside from restoration of credit, the miracle of government guarantee made mortgage lending easy as apple pie. Guarantee and uniform underwriting standards — sound ones! — made previously illiquid and expensive mortgages as easy to transfer as shares of stock, and cheap, long after the Depression was gone.

For good or ill, as early as the end of WW II our homes became the stores of our national household wealth. Got to put it someplace. Stock market guys would like it to be their market, but it has its own epic instability. Houses it was. The original stop-the-Depression charter of the mortgage agencies became ordinary everyday-everybody utilities. We let them bloat, 1985-2004, for the interest of their stockholders, an inherently unstable situation. Even before mortgage credit went bonkers, ca. 2002, and the push for home ownership ran beyond qualified candidates, the ease of mortgage finance had likely over-fed housing wealth.

Here in the aftermath of the Bubble it is convenient to have someone to blame for our pain. “Fannie and Freddie” have become curse words. Profanities. They were NOT responsible for the $2 trillion in toxic loans, but they are big, fat targets for the Right, hating all government, also oddly the agencies’ boosters on the Left. Hell hath no fury like a social engineer scorned.

The truly culpable parties — Wall Street bankers — have made a clean getaway. John Dillinger and Clyde Barrow would still be in business if they had gone to Princeton, gotten MBAs, and learned to lie properly.

The result is self-inflicted paralysis. The plain-sight truth: for housing to recover we must re-activate Fannie. In a time of falling collateral value, private lenders cannot lend, and we must rely on government guarantee. That’s as certain as the Pope’s religion and behavior by bears in woods. However, reactivation is impossible without leadership to explain what happened and what did not, and that rhetorical task might be beyond FDR himself. In every financial crisis, senior bankers have been available to explain and structure recovery, but this time the bankers’ conduct before, during, and after has been so without conscience that it may be another generation before financial-market Pooh-Bahs can earn back trust. If they tried, which they have not.

The politicians are prisoners of a homicidally angry people, and we’re going to stay in this pickle until we get over it.

The turn in these ISM surveys may be even more important than the often-revised payroll survey.

Total U.S. foreclosure activity and the U.S. foreclosure rate in 2011 were both at their lowest annual level since 2007, according to RealtyTrac®, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties. The company recently released its Year-End 2011 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™, which shows a total of 2,698,967 foreclosure filings-default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions-were reported on 1,887,777 U.S. properties in 2011, a decrease of 34 percent in total properties from 2010. Foreclosure activity in 2011 was 33 percent below the 2009 total and 19 percent below the 2008 total.

The report also shows that 1.45 percent of U.S. housing units (one in 69) had at least one foreclosure filing during the year, down from 2.23 percent in 2010, 2.21 percent in 2009, and 1.84 percent in 2008.

“Foreclosures were in full delay mode in 2011, resulting in a dramatic drop in foreclosure activity for the year,” says Brandon Moore, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “The lack of clarity regarding many of the documentation and legal issues plaguing the foreclosure industry means that we are continuing to see a highly dysfunctional foreclosure process that is inefficiently dealing with delinquent mortgages-particularly in states with a judicial foreclosure process.

“There were strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets. We expect that trend to continue this year, boosting foreclosure activity for 2012 higher than it was in 2011, though still below the peak of 2010.”

December activity hits 49-month low, scheduled auctions up in fourth quarter

Foreclosure filings were reported on 205,024 U.S. properties in December, a decrease of 9 percent from the previous month and down 20 percent from December 2010. December’s total was the lowest monthly total since November 2007-a 49-month low.

December Default notices (NOD, LIS) decreased 19 percent from the previous month and were down 23 percent from December 2010; Scheduled foreclosure auctions (NTS, NFS) decreased 12 percent from the previous month and were down 24 percent from December 2010; and bank repossessions (REO) increased 10 percent from the previous month but were still down 12 percent from December 2010.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 586,133 U.S. properties in the fourth quarter, a 4 percent decrease from the previous quarter and down 27 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010. Fourth quarter default notices were down 6 percent from the previous quarter and down 22 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010; scheduled foreclosure auctions increased 4 percent from the previous quarter but were still down 32 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010; and REOs decreased 11 percent from the previous quarter and were down 24 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.

Nevada, Arizona, California post top state foreclosure rates for year

More than 6 percent of Nevada housing units (one in 16) had at least one foreclosure filing in 2011, giving it the nation’s highest state foreclosure rate for the fifth consecutive year despite a 31 percent decrease in foreclosure activity from 2010. Nevada foreclosure activity dropped 35 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, driven primarily by a 70 percent decrease in default notices -the result of a new law (AB 284) that took effect in October requiring lenders to file an additional affidavit before starting the foreclosure process. The new law also increases the penalties for the use of fraudulent documents in foreclosure.

Despite a 28 percent drop in foreclosure activity from November to December- caused largely by a 41 percent drop in scheduled foreclosure auctions-Arizona registered the nation’s second highest state foreclosure rate for the third year in a row, with 4.14 percent of its housing units (one in 24) with at least one foreclosure filing in 2011.

California also experienced a substantial month-over-month drop in initial foreclosure notices in December-default notices there were down 38 percent from the previous month-but the state still registered the nation’s third highest foreclosure rate for all of 2011. One in every 31 California housing units (3.19 percent) had at least one foreclosure filing during the year, down from 4.08 percent in 2010 and 4.75 percent in 2009.

Georgia posted the nation’s fourth highest state foreclosure rate, with 2.71 percent of housing units (one in 37) with at least one foreclosure filing in 2011, and Utah posted the nation’s fifth highest state foreclosure rate, with 2.32 percent of its housing units (one in 43) with a foreclosure filing during the year.

Other states with 2011 foreclosure rates ranking among the nation’s 10 highest were Michigan (2.21 percent), Florida (2.06 percent), Illinois (1.95 percent), Colorado (1.78 percent), and Idaho (1.77 percent).

Foreclosure processing timelines continue to increase

U.S. properties foreclosed in the fourth quarter took an average of 348 days to complete the foreclosure process, up from 336 days in the third quarter and up from 305 days in the fourth quarter of 2010. The length of the average foreclosure process has increased 24 percent from 281 days in the third quarter of 2010, when lenders began to re-evaluate foreclosure procedures in earnest as the result of the so-called robo-signing controversy.

The average foreclosure process in New York has increased 37 percent during the same time period, and New York properties foreclosed in the fourth quarter took an average of 1,019 days to complete the foreclosure process-the longest of any state.

New Jersey documented the nation’s second longest average foreclosure process, at 964 days, and Florida documented the nation’s third longest average foreclosure process, at 806 days. Foreclosure activity in both these states dropped more than 60 percent from 2010 to 2011. All three states with the longest foreclosure timelines employ the judicial foreclosure process.

Texas continued to register the shortest average foreclosure process of any state, at 90 days-still an increase from 86 days in the third quarter and from 81 days in the fourth quarter of 2010. Other states with average foreclosure process among the nation’s shortest in the fourth quarter were Delaware (106 days), Kentucky (108 days), Virginia (132 days), and Louisiana (134 days).

Top metro foreclosure rates

With 7.38 percent of its housing units (one in 14) with at least one foreclosure filing in 2011, Las Vegas posted the nation’s top foreclosure rate for the year among metropolitan statistical areas with a population of 200,000 or more.

Ten out of the top 20 metro foreclosure rates in 2011 were in California cities, led by Stockton at No. 2, with 5.43 percent of housing units (one in 18) with at least one foreclosure filing during the year. Other California cities in the top 10 were Modesto at No. 3 (5.29 percent), Vallejo-Fairfield at No. 4 (5.20 percent), Riverside-San Bernardino at No. 5 (5.16 percent), Merced at No. 7 (4.40 percent), Bakersfield at No. 9 (4.31 percent), Sacramento at No. 10 (4.17 percent), Fresno at No. 11 (3.82 percent), Visalia at No. 13 (3.67 percent), and Ventura at No. 16 (3.27 percent).

Other metro areas with foreclosure rates ranking among the top 20 were Phoenix at No. 6 (5.10 percent); Reno, Nev., at No. 8 (4.37 percent); Atlanta at No. 12 (3.69 percent); Prescott, Ariz., at No. 14 (3.50 percent); Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., at No. 15 (3.29 percent); Greeley, Colo., at No. 17 (2.97 percent); Detroit at No. 18 (2.94 percent); Boise, Idaho, at No. 19 (2.85 percent); and Salt Lake City at No. 20 (2.81 percent).