US Residential Mortgage Delinquencies in Pictures

Ben Bernanke gave some insight into the pattern of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures in a recent talk. To begin, here is where the problems have been - the hot spots indicate areas with the biggest changes in delinquencies.
Ben suggests three contributing factors. Firstly increasing financial stress on mortgage holders, decreasing the ability to pay. The employment rate is a proxy for this:
Clearly that does not explain that much. So how about negative equity? When prices are falling that effects the incentive to pay. Here we have:
That gives us a better explanation for Florida, California, Nevada, Michigan, and parts of New Mexico and Colorado.

Finally non homeowner purchases, aka Buy to rent, gives an idea of speculative buying:
This is insightful but I'd prefer to see a map of new home construction. My suspicion is that that would line up pretty well with speculative construction accounting for many of the hotspots in delinquencies.

One should also mention in this context mortgage types. The dynamic maps at the NY FED allow one to analyse the distribution of ARMs and ARMs resetting this year, and that may provide some insight into future delinquency distribution.