larger view

No surprise here: state foreclosures levels hit their highest mark in 15 years last quarter, Dataquick reported this morning.

Here's the beef:

Lending institutions sent homeowners 113,676 default notices  during the January-to-March period. That was up by 39.4 percent from 81,550 the previous quarter, and up 143.1 percent from 46,760 for first-quarter 2007, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
Last quarter's number of defaults was the highest in  DataQuick's statistics, which go back to 1992.

Kern's stats broke out this way for default notices:

County/Region            2007Q1      2008Q1      Yr/Yr%

Kern 1,297       3,211      147.6%

Some other counties of interest:

Fresno   1,116   2,464      120.8%

Santa Barbara   372  897      141.1%

Los Angeles  8,843   20,339      130.0%

Orange 2,644  7,082      167.9%

Ventura  965     2,176      125.5%

Regions:

Socal   26,748    65,309      144.2%

Bay Area  6,730   16,398      143.7%

Coast 1,182    3,197      170.5%

Central Valley 11,054    26,793      142.4%

-- Gretchen Wenner, staff writer