Below The Beltway

Two stories in the local media demonstrate that the foreclosure story isn’t over in the Metro Washington, D.C.

First, the Washington Post reports that foreclosures are on the rise throughout the D.C. area:

The Washington region, once considered immune to the unfolding mortgage crisis, has experienced a surge of loans gone bad in recent months. It’s an alarming sign that even an economy with plenty of well-paid government contracting jobs could not avoid the credit crunch that’s plagued more-troubled regions of the country.

Rapidly deteriorating conditions in the area and beyond prompted the Bush administration to propose a plan last week to temporarily freeze interest rates for some at-risk borrowers, an approach skeptics say will not help nearly enough people to make a difference to the economy or, on a smaller scale, to the most troubled areas.

Locally, those areas include Prince George’s County neighborhoods popular with first-time home buyers and outlying Northern Virginia suburbs with hundreds of newly built homes that attracted speculators. There were 79 foreclosures for every 10,000 Washington area households in the third quarter, not including renters — up from 11 a year ago, according to George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis.

And the Washington Examiner reports that the foreclosure rate in Prince William County is up tenfold:

WASHINGTON (Map, News) – More than 750 houses in Prince William County entered foreclosure in the fall, escalating the area’s already bleak foreclosure woes.

In the first half of November alone, 148 houses were foreclosed on — or about 10 a day, a county financial analyst told The Examiner.

There were 1,914 foreclosures this year through Nov. 15, compared with fewer than 200 foreclosures in all of 2006.

“I don’t want to say we anticipate more, but we’re mindful this might not be over yet,” financial analyst Bill Vaughan told The Examiner.

Not over to say the least.