Silicon Valley has an image as an economic powerhouse, with high levels of employment and increasing home values. However, the foreclosure rate for the metropolitan area that encompasses Silicon Valley is not noticeably lower than the rates for other areas considered to be hard hit by the foreclosure crisis. A report just released by the Foreclosure-Response organization provides the foreclosure rates for all 366 U.S. Metropolitan areas as of September 2013. Full report. The current foreclosure rate for the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metro area is 2.3%, which is the same rate calculated for the SF-Oakland Metro area.  The Silicon Valley rate is just below the 2.4% rate for Chico, the 2.5% rate for Bakersfield and the 2.7% rate for Sacramento. The rate for Modesto is 3% and Stockton is 3.1%. None of the rates in these hard hit areas are dramatically higher than Silicon Valley.

The report also measured the improvement in the “serious delinquency” rate since the height of the foreclosure crisis in 2009. Serious delinquency is defined as 90 or more days delinquent. The improvement in the delinquency rate in Silicon Valley is actually less than the improvement in other metro areas. The San Jose Metro area serious delinquency rate in December 2009 was 7.8%. It is now 4%. In contrast, the serious delinquency rate for Stockton dropped from 18.5% to 6.1%. In the Modesto Metro area, the delinquency rate fell from 17.3 to 5.8%. As is true in the comparative foreclosure rates, the current delinquency rates in all three of these areas are now similar, contrasting with the sharply higher delinquency rates for these other areas in 2009.