If you're like me, you're really tired of how the media is going after the housing market -- yep, I call it "going after". So I was so glad to see Berniece Ross do her thing on Inman.com today at http://www.inman.com/inmannews.aspx?ID=65242 -- the link won't last forever, but she cites USA Today as just one source of the problem, here is a pertinent quote of what she says was omitted from a report by a mortgage banking official covered in the press:

"1. Thirty-five percent of the homes in the U.S. do NOT have a mortgage.

1. Some 94.88 percent of the loans ARE performing.




2. The foreclosure problem in this country is really a story about seven states.




3. The biggest foreclosure problems are in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. These are manufacturing states that had horrible job losses. Since 2001, Michigan has lost 300,000 jobs. These states would probably have had problems no matter what the market was doing.




4. The other four states -- California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona -- experienced significant overbuilding. Twenty-five percent of the foreclosures in these states are on properties that are held by investors who were speculating.




5. Only 25 percent of all mortgages are subprime, and of these, 75 percent are performing.




6. In the other 43 states, foreclosures have fallen in 2007 from 2006 (data from Michael Clawson, vice president, Central Texas Mortgage)."