Late last week RealtyTrac came out with their 1st quarter foreclosure activity report. Accordingly they updated their March numbers. In Chicago the foreclosure activity was still subdued as a result of the delays caused by improper foreclosure processing. Although activity was up 39% from last month it was still down 5% from last year.
At some point soon these delays will be behind us and activity will pick up again.
Interestingly, I finally found some longer term Chicago area foreclosure trend data from the Woodstock Institute. I don’t know how they measure foreclosure activity vs. RealtyTrac but at least we can assume their methodology is consistent over time. It shows pretty dramatically just how far we’ve come with foreclosures since the first quarter of 2006 – from 6,000 – 7,000 per quarter to 20,000 per quarter.
But that’s the filings. Then there’s the actual auctions, which they also trend.
The foreclosure auctions in the Chicago area have gone up from about 1500 per quarter to roughly 9,000.