Residential Foreclosures in the United States

Residential foreclosures have been rare in the environment of rapidly rising prices of 2002 and 2003. If interest rates were to rise in the future, and if prices were to fall, the number of foreclosures would be expected to rise. Foreclosures are hundreds of times more likely to occur in troubled areas such as Baltimore, Maryland than in affluent cities such as Irvine, California. Individuals and small firms have often utilized their local knowledge to gain high profit margins through the resale of foreclosed properties, often realizing substantially greater gains than large national lenders.