Damn those people at RealtyTrac! They redesigned their Web site and they no longer provide the underlying data on Chicago foreclosure activity. Fortunately though, I can estimate it but it’s a bit more work than before. Anyway they just released their February foreclosure market report and it shows, for Chicago, that foreclosure activity appears to be back on the decline. When you compare it to the extremely high levels of 2009 it’s dramatically lower.
Illinois continues to have the third highest foreclosure rate in the country and Chicago is number 10 among cities.
Commenting at the national level Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, says:
At a high level the U.S. foreclosure inferno has been effectively contained and should be reduced to a slow burn in the next two years. But dangerous foreclosure flare-ups are still popping up in states where foreclosures have been delayed by a lengthy court process or by new legislation making it more difficult to foreclose outside of the court system.
One thing interesting to note is that RealtyTrac reports that Chicago has 37,626 properties in some stage of foreclosure. Now compare that to Zillow, which only shows 14,128, and that presumably includes pre-foreclosure. So that’s a huge discrepancy. How do you know what to believe?
