The Mortgage Bankers Association says that without California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, the number of first-quarter foreclosure starts would have declined. (Yeah, but it's a little like saying that aside from the cars on the 405, 101, 5 and 10, L.A. traffic moves along pretty well.) Much of the activity, of course, involves the subprime and speculative crowd. Nearly 19 percent of all subprime loans were either delinquent by more than 30 days or in foreclosure, up from 17.9 percent at the end of last year. And speculators in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona have been walking away from properties now that home prices have started to fall and they're faced with resets in the adjustable-rate mortgages they took out (see earlier post). Here's the MBA press release and the NYT story.