Alan Greenspan tells us today that he sees signs of the housing market bottoming.

The Financial Times tells us that delinquencies are increasing in prime mortgages, which are even harder to modify than subprime.

Reverse mortgages could be the next subprime mortgage product to experience rapid growth while taking advantage of a vulnerable segment of the population, top U.S. bank regulator John Dugan said Monday.

There continues to be an alarming amount of foreclosures. Last month, 7.8 percent of mortgages in Prince William County went into foreclosure. Foreclosures affect 3.6 percent of mortgages in Loudoun County, and in Fairfax 2.4 percent of mortgages were foreclosed on. But one Realtor in Loudoun County says the housing market there, may actually be recovering.

Standard & Poor's said delinquencies of home-related loans climbed in January, with the rate surging in particular from December for home-equity lines of credit and prime-rated jumbo mortgages.

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that there have now been 1,000,000 foreclosures filed so far in 2009. It also noted that the Mortgage Bankers Association’s most recent data shows some 12% of all mortgages are delinquent. It gets worse. The group expects this 2009 foreclosure number to more than double.

The optimism I am hearing the on the street about home sales picking up in the past few weeks has been tempered by the scary numbers that Equifax is reporting.

It looks like the quantity and velocity of foreclosures is not abating anytime soon if these numbers continue.

Virginia and Maryland have more foreclosures, but a new report shows that D.C. had the biggest increase last month.

D.C. foreclosure filings surged to 398 in April — up 42 percent from a year ago.

Virginia defaults increased 5 percent to 6,254 and Maryland foreclosures dropped 39 percent to 3,613 according to the latest survey by Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, a foreclosure research firm.

Teresa Bondora and her family abandoned their two-story brick home in Atlanta rather than fall behind on their mortgage and $30,000 worth of home renovation debt.

Foreclosures took a frightening jump up in April. A report from RealtyTrac says that the number moved up 32% over April of last year and hit 342,038. Homes defaults and auctions rose 47% over the same period.

RealtyTrac’s theory for the jump is that banks are becoming more aggressive in working through their portfolios of bad mortgages after telling the federal government that they would hold off to help stabalize the market.