So the news last week was that the housing market was seemingly getting back on track. Take a gander at this, via Calculated Risk. Based on data put together by Matt Padilla, it tracks foreclosures in Orange County. Now Orange County has certainly been one of the harder hit markets, but still there is no turn around in the trend. The trajectory is straight up. And until foreclosures start to slow down, the housing market can’t really bounce back, now can it?

James Kwak weighs in here.

Real estate got just about everyone into trouble in Phoenix, and the thinking seems to be that real estate is going to get everyone out.

A real estate “frenzy” is apparently developing there, the NYT reports, as bottom-feeders gobble up mass foreclosures.

It’s not just Phoenix I fear, it’s our national mind-set writ large.

Foreclosures are surging in the Chicago suburbs, according to this report in Chicago Business (h/t: Alison Kemper). Foreclosures jumped between 25 and 70 percent in suburban counties outside the city. Foreclosure filings for the six-county metro area are the the highest since the onset of the housing crisis. The main cause of the new foreclosure wave appears tied more to the real economy than to the financial mess.

But, the most interesting item in the report is the spatial distribution of underwater homes.

In the far western suburbs along the Fox River from North Aurora to Elgin, nearly one in five homes listed for sale is a foreclosure or a short sale.

Foreclosures fell by 8.4 percent in the city of Chicago.