Where do American homeowners face the highest numbers of foreclosures?

Indianapolis – the state’s largest city – has been particularly hard hit. The metro recorded one foreclosure filing for every 1,249 homes in February, giving it the third-highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

Only Lakeland and Punta Gorda in Florida reported worse figures for metros. Both of which have faced persistently high foreclosure levels…

Experts say a combination of rising property taxes, higher insurance premiums and the cost of maintaining aging homes is putting pressure on many Indiana homeowners…

In February, foreclosure activity across the country reached 38,840 properties – a 20 percent increase compared with the same month last year.

After the housing crisis of the late 2000s, keeping track of foreclosures is an interesting business. Is the United States on the verge of sharp rise in foreclosures? Did the country address the issues that contributed to the crisis nearly two decades ago?

One way to look at foreclosures is to consider them from the role of borrowers. How do people and households make hard choices about their budgets when resources are lacking? What is the role of personal responsibility? If more individual households are not able to pay their mortgage, this can lead to large effects.

But this article considers foreclosures by states and metro areas. What if foreclosures are the result of systems and local conditions? (I do not find states as a particularly helpful geography; housing situations can vary across a state even though state policies or conditions could exert similar effects across a state.) What is it about these metro areas that they have higher rates of foreclosures? What are the factors influencing this across owners, lenders, officials, and local conditions in a region? And what could be done on a regional level to lower the number of foreclosures as compared to tackling this at a state and national level? What might help in Lakeland might not be what helps in Indianapolis.