Georgia had the highest foreclosure rate of any state during the 2nd quarter of this year.
Forty-three percent of all homes in the state were in foreclosure.
You might think that Whitfield county, with a 12 percent unemployment rate, would be near the top of the page---but not so.
This near 3-bedroom home on Daisy Lane in Dalton is on the market for 125-thousand dollars.
It's a foreclosure that once sold for thousands of dollars more.
But that was before the recession and job losses changed the Whitfield county economy.
RANDY PARKER, PRES. ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS "We have seen that decrease, the foreclosures have pulled the values of our homes down."
According to the Realty-Trac report, the average foreclosure sells for about 32% less that the others.
But, despite an economy resting primarily on the ailing carpet industry, Dalton does not lead the state.
MAYOR DAVID PENNINGTON, DALTON "We're sort of the epicenter of the home building collapse of American because of the carpet industry, but in our actual home building here, we never really had a hot a marker..so the slow down her has affected us just like it has everybody else, but not near the extreme it has in the Atlanta area."
In fact, it's Atlanta where most of the loss in value has occurred.
When you look past the initial figures, there are some bright spots in the north Georgia real estate market.
RANDY PARKER "The mortgage industry, realtors, the banks are all seem to be really working together better now, even than we were a couple of years ago..the transactions have gotten smoother."
The mayor says the unemployment numbers ..while not good right now... Don't tell all the story.
MAYOR DAVID PENNINGTON "A lot of that unemployment in our data are really people who don't live here.. We don't like it they lost their their jobs..a lot of them live Cleveland, Chattanooga..Ringgold."
RANDY PARKER "Nobody wants to be where we're at and we all want to climb out of it ..We're doing all we can to make that happen."
In Georgia, there are 10-thousand-800 foreclosures, representing one in every 376 housing units in the state.
