TEXT OF STORY

Bill Radke: So stocks are up but there’s some gloomy housing news out today. RealtyTrac says foreclosures are spreading across the country. Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.

Nancy Marshall Genzer: The usual suspects are leading the foreclosure pack — California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. But Eugene, Ore.?

Rick Sharga: Their foreclosure activity is up almost 80 percent year over year and almost 180 percent over two years.

That’s Rick Sharga, senior vice president of RealtyTrac:

Sharga: What’s a little bit of an eye-opener is just watching how rapidly the foreclosure problem is becoming real in some of these smaller markets.

Sharga says foreclosures are spreading as unemployment rises. People can’t make their mortgage payments.

But Morningstar housing analyst Eric Landry says the nation’s employment picture is improving. And foreclosures don’t tell the whole story. He says prices in the worst hit areas have stablized.

Eric Landry: Those markets that led us into this, you know the bubble markets — California especially, and to a lesser extent Arizona and Floria and Las Vegas, are probably very close to the end of severe price declines.

Landry won’t predict when prices in the rest of the country will stop falling.

In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.