Forbes magazine and Moody’s Economy.com surveyed the 200 largest metropolitan areas, adding up the number of loans to low-rated borrowers and dividing that sum by the total number of mortgages to calculate the percentage of each area’s market that is below prime.

Here are the 10 metro areas with the highest percentages of nonprime mortgages, which makes them susceptible to defaults as unemployment rates continue to rise.

Mission, Texas
Detroit
Miami
Brownsville, Texas
Merced, Calif.
Lakeland, Fla.
Bakersfield, Calif.
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
San Bernardino, Calif.
Visalia, Calif.

Source: Forbes, Maha Atal (03/31/2009)

But at the bottom of the heap lies the Baltic nation of Estonia. Once one of Europe’s fastest-growing real estate markets, property prices there fell by a massive 23% in 2008 after growing by 18% in 2007.

Chicago was second on the list, followed by the Riverside, Calif.; Phoenix, Detroit; Dallas; Tampa, Fla.; Philadelphia; San Diego, Calif.; and Boston metro areas.

Some of those metro areas have also been hot spots for foreclosure. RealtyTrac, a foreclosure data company, reported that the Riverside metro area had the third-highest rate of foreclosure-related filings in 2008 among metro areas it tracks nationwide, while the Phoenix area was fifth on the list and Detroit placed 10th.

1. You make over $250,000 and you still can’t afford to buy a house.
2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
3. You know how to eat an artichoke.
4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.
5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to g et there rather than how many miles away it is.
6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and Drought

You can Live in New York City where…

1. Y ou say ‘the city’ and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan
2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can’t find Wisconsin on a map.
3. You think Central Park is ‘nature’
4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual.
5. You’ve worn out a car horn.
6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

The market reporting the greatest decline in its price per square foot was Las Vegas, Nev., which saw a 30.8 percent drop to $121.17 between June 2007 and June 2008, according to the RPX Monthly Housing Market Report, which is based on values of a daily price-per-square-foot index during a 28-day period in June.

Sacramento, Calif., posted the second-largest drop in June, down 27.8 percent to $155.71, followed by Phoenix, Ariz., down 26.9 percent to $115.28.

The markets with the smallest decreases in price per square foot were Charlotte, N.C., down 0.2 percent to $100.62, and Columbus, Ohio, off 0.7 percent to $100.26.

According to the report, Victorville, Calif. saw a population increase of 9.5 percent to 107,232 in 2007, putting the San Bernardino County city second on the list of the nation’s fastest-growing large cities with populations of 100,000 or more. New Orleans ranked number one on the list, with a population increase of 13.8 percent to 239,124 after a seeing its population in 2005 dwindle to half in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The other four California cities that made the list are Bakersfield; Irvine; Moreno Valley; and Visalia.