Las Vegas mortgage foreclosures up.

Nevada moves ahead of Colorado as the state with the highest home loan foreclosure rate in January, reports RealtyTrac. Which means southern Nevada as the population center takes the hardest hit.

One expert cites creative financing, a sizzling housing market and frenzied speculation as reasons to the current foreclosure trend. I'd emphasize that the speculation really did most of the harm, at least here. And now that the subprime lending segment seems to be in a freefall, for the time being anyway, it's going to set back the housing market's recovery period. Anything positive here? Yes, buyer's market.