How the National Slide Is Felt Locally

Sometimes the cliches prove true.

"Real estate is about location, location, location," said Nicolas P. Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. "People want to know what's going on in their neighborhoods and not generalities."

But crunching numbers that way poses a challenge for analysts because even populous neighborhoods or cities generally do not have a lot of transactions in any given month, making it tough to draw solid conclusions.

That's why the government and industry trade groups usually examine housing data at the national and state levels, Retsinas said. "Large areas provide more reliable data."

Still, because many people care about the granular details, two research firms -- First American CoreLogic and Fulton Research and Consulting -- pulled data for The Washington Post on several Zip codes in this area.

First American crunched numbers on foreclosures, while Fulton Research analyzed price data pulled from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, the local multiple listing service. The Zip codes were selected to reflect geographic diversity and varied concentrations of foreclosures.

The trend is clear: While some Zip codes have fared better than others, none has escaped the impact of the foreclosure crisis and the credit crunch at the root of the U.S. economy's troubles.

The more established areas near major job centers came out ahead of the outlying suburbs that were overbuilt during the housing boom, said Dan Fulton of Fulton Research.

"These areas did not have the same number of sales during the boom times as the growing areas, so they were not subjected to the same number of subprime loans," Fulton said. "Therefore, they have more price stability."

Subprime loans typically cater to people with blemished credit or little cash and gained popularity with investors and other buyers when home prices were climbing.

Most of those loans were adjustable-rate mortgages that started with low teaser rates that later jumped. The thinking was that rising home values would allow borrowers to refinance or sell before their higher rates kicked in. But when home values fell and credit markets froze, those borrowers were stuck with unaffordable loans.

Foreclosure rates spiked. Sales and prices plummeted.