Great Map of Boston and Massachusetts Foreclosure Trends

Posted by
September 2, 2009
There’s a lot of confusion out there about the foreclosure crisis.
I remember editors at one paper I worked for seeking in vain a suburban counterpart of battered, boarded up and foreclosed Hendry Street in Dorchester.
Anyway, I am sure there was a lot of salivating over potential headlines, Wellesley’s Foreclosure Alley and things of that sort.
Of course, it turned out to be the El Dorado of foreclosure stories.
The fact is, you are not going to find a bunch of Hendry streets out in the suburbs, especially in towns like Wellesley and Weston, where foreclosures, while hardly unknown, are not a huge problem.
Anyway, I remember trying to explain in vain the idea, that, at least here in Massachusetts, the vast majority of foreclosures are taking place in low income areas that were flooded during the boom with crazy, high-risk subprime loans.
I might have better luck had I been able to roll out this nifty, new graphic just released by the Boston Fed detailing foreclosure trends in Massachusetts since 1990.
The new graphic highlights low-income towns and cities on a map of the state. Then it superimposes foreclosure trends on top of these.
Walk through the graphic year by year and you will steadily watch low income areas, from Boston neighborhoods like Dorchester and Mattapan to Brockton, steadily filing with color to signify rising foreclosure rates.
The map quickly fills in around such low-income zip codes during the real estate collapse of the early 1990s, when a similar frenzy of suspect lending yielded a bumper crop of foreclosures in poor neighborhoods. The map steadily drains of color from the mid-1990s until 2007, when foreclosure rates start to spike again.
Then a similar, but even more intense pattern emerges on the map as foreclosures mount again in 2007 and 2008 – apparently there’s no data yet to plug in for 2009.
Anyway, it’s definitely worth checking out.

There’s a lot of confusion out there about the foreclosure crisis.

I remember editors at one paper I worked for seeking in vain a suburban counterpart of battered, boarded up and foreclosed Hendry Street in Dorchester.

Anyway, I am sure there was a lot of salivating over potential headlines, Wellesley’s Foreclosure Alley and things of that sort.

Of course, it turned out to be the El Dorado of foreclosure stories.

The fact is, you are not going to find a bunch of Hendry streets out in the suburbs, especially in towns like Wellesley and Weston, where foreclosures, while hardly unknown, are not a huge problem.

Anyway, I remember trying to explain in vain the idea, that, at least here in Massachusetts, the vast majority of foreclosures are taking place in low income areas that were flooded during the boom with crazy, high-risk subprime loans.

I might have better luck had I been able to roll out this nifty, new graphic just released by the Boston Fed detailing foreclosure trends in Massachusetts since 1990.

The new graphic highlights low-income towns and cities on a map of the state. Then it superimposes foreclosure trends on top of these.

Walk through the graphic year by year and you will steadily watch low income areas, from Boston neighborhoods like Dorchester and Mattapan to Brockton, steadily filing with color to signify rising foreclosure rates.

The map quickly fills in around such low-income zip codes during the real estate collapse of the early 1990s, when a similar frenzy of suspect lending yielded a bumper crop of foreclosures in poor neighborhoods. The map steadily drains of color from the mid-1990s until 2007, when foreclosure rates start to spike again.

Then a similar, but even more intense pattern emerges on the map as foreclosures mount again in 2007 and 2008 – apparently there’s no data yet to plug in for 2009.

Anyway, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Source: Boston Globe

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