foreclosure list

The worst of the fallout from the burst housing bubble continues to be highly localized. Metros in California, Nevada, and Florida have the most troubled housing markets, according to our new Housing-Mortgage Stress Index. Nearly half of the metros on the list—nine of the top 20, including all five of the top five—are in California: Stockton, Modesto, Vallejo-Fairfield, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, and Bakersfield-Delano, along with Fresno, Visalia-Porterville, Sacramento and Salinas. Six Florida metros make the list—Miami, Orlando, Port St. Lucie, Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, Lakeland-Winter Haven, and Palm Bay-Melbourne. Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, Phoenix,  Provo, Utah, and Greely, Colorado, round out the 20 most stressed housing markets.

At the height of the boom, real estate, housing, and construction-related industries accounted for more than a quarter of the entire economies of Las Vegas, Miami, and Phoenix and 30 percent of Orlando’s, as I note in The Great Reset. It was like a giant Ponzi scheme, fueled entirely by debt. The hardest-hit Sun Belt metros lacked the underlying economic heft to support their skyrocketing housing values; some of them may never recover.

If we look at just large metros—those with more than 1 million people—Tampa, Detroit, Atlanta, San Diego, Jacksonville, Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach, Chicago and L.A., show high levels of housing-mortgage stress, along with the five noted above—Riverside, Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix, Sacramento, and Miami.

The Housing-Mortgage Stress Index shows the U.S. metros whose housing markets—and homeowners—face the highest levels of stress and danger of foreclosure and falling prices. The index is based on three variables.

Gallery: Worst Real Estate Cities

The Worst American City to Live In? It's One You've Never Heard Of

AOL's money website WalletPop composed a list of the worst American cities to live in based on the climate, unemployment and foreclosure figures, crime stats, etc. Naturally, Detroit and LA both made the cut. But there were some surprises, too.

One thing you probably wouldn't have expected: The No. 1 city on the list is El Centro, California. Where? It's a city just across the Mexican border with a 27.5 percent unemployment rate, which is the highest in the country. So, yea, that sounds pretty crappy.

The other cities we could probably have rattled off just by thinking of the places that novelists and screenwriters use when they need a locale that sounds depressing. That includes the likes of Cleveland, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, and Memphis, which round out the list. As for New York City, it doesn't appear on the top 10. Congrats: It's no longer the go-to symbol for urban decay!

[Image of a house in Detroit via Getty]

Send an email to Brian Moylan, the author of this post, at brian@gawker.com.

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