Even folks over at the Wall Street Journal are paying attention to the surge of foreclosures in Metro Phoenix. Sorry to say, Phoenix is not among the markets they consider as "about to make a rebound."

They refer to an Arizona Republic article published the other day, pointing out how areas in the furthest-out fringes of the Metro area rank highest in the foreclosure tallies.

This mirrors what happens in other metro areas, too.

In any housing slump, the furthest out areas are the first to fall in price, and they tend to fall the farthest. It all makes sense of course. Faced with a long commute on the valley's traffic-choked freeways, who wouldn't want to move in closer and gain an hour or two of leisure time each day?

But now, builders anxious to move the fields and fields full of empty houses they built out there compound the issue, cutting prices deeply to get the monkey off their backs.

And all those investors bought out there during the giddy days of 2005 when prices rose every day. Yup, way out there in the farthest extremes of Maricopa County and even Pinal County, expecting prices to continue their upward march into the stratosphere.

Now they're stuck with adjustable rate mortgages about to send their payments into orbit instead. Meanwhile, their property values tank. Or they bought houses before they were built and are now simply walking away from their deposits since values have dropped far below what they had agreed to pay.

Both the investors and the builders are losing their properties to foreclosure.

Not a pretty sight, but unfortunately, that's reality here and now in Metro Phoenix.