I was afraid of that. Last year, when I was up in St. Johns, I was already amazed at the number of foreclosed houses in the area. (What amazed me even more was hearing the stories behind them: you'd think that building a grow room in the basement wouldn't be such a priority.)

Gotta continue to purge the bad home loans to people who should have never received one in the first place. Along with the people who had and abused HELOC's to buy jet skis, RV's, etc... Who would not have been able to afford those items in a conventional manner.

The article doesn't give much in the way of context apart from a mention near the top that Oregon is a throwaway statement at the end about Nevada having had the highest level of foreclosure activity for almost four years now (for those keeping score, their streak began in January 2007, before the general public realization about the housing crisis).

According to the RealtyTrac report (which the BJ did not deign to link to) the ratio of foreclosed homes to housing units is highest in Nevada (1:29). Oregon's actually below the average for the country as a whole (1:139). For now.

Highest rates of foreclosures in the state? Columbia, Jefferson, Crook, Deschutes, and Jackson counties. And only Deschutes has a rate higher than the national average.

Of course, that average is being yanked up by the sheer volume of states like California, Michigan, Florida, and Illinois that are all in the top ten for rate of foreclosure and have large populations to boot.

Sorry, messed up an edit in the first sentence. Meant to say "...Oregon is #11...".