Cleveland, Ohio may well be the foreclosure capital of the nation. More:

When asked recently just how bad it is, [County Treasurer Jim] Rokakis unfurled a six-foot by four-foot Cleveland city plot map. Each lot was covered with dots of red ink where foreclosed homes filled the plots. From a few feet away, the map looked heavily freckled, while some neighborhoods nearly melted together in crimson masses.

Foreclosures hit Cleveland early and hard. By the summer of 2007, it had four of the top 21 ZIP codes for foreclosure filings in the United States. According to RealtyTrac, the city’s 44105 ZIP, known as the Slavic Village, was the hardest hit U.S. community with 783 filings.

Think about that. Seven hundred eighty three foreclosure filings in one ZIP code. Amazing.