After hitting a 12 month high in October, Chicago foreclosure activity approached new lows in November according to data updated by ATTOM Data Solutions on Monday in conjunction with their November US Foreclosure Activity Report. That just shows you how volatile this data is as you can clearly see in the graph below, which breaks the data down into 3 stages of the foreclosure process.
To be clear I said approached new lows. November was the third lowest month of foreclosure activity I have record of. Nevertheless, you’re looking at a 17.4% decline from last November there.
The biggest decline came from auctions which hit a new low since I’ve been tracking the data. The downside of that decline is that auctions are part of the resolution process and if you want these foreclosures out of the way one way they get dealt with is through auctions. What you really want to see is a decline in defaults, which did go down but not by that much.
The ATTOM Data Solutions report noted that US Foreclosure activity was down 6% from a year ago with foreclosure starts down 11% and bank repossessions up 22%. Both of those are good developments since the foreclosure pipeline is being filled slower and emptied faster.
Illinois was highlighted in the report as one of the top 5 states for foreclosure rates. Go Illinois!
Chicago Shadow Inventory
At the end of the day perhaps the most important metric is how many foreclosures are underway in total in Chicago and how is that number trending. The answer is in the graph below which demonstrates the dramatic decline in foreclosures since I started tracking them in 2013. November was the second lowest month that I have a record of with 5096 homes at some stage of foreclosure compared to September which had 5057 homes. And, clearly, the rate of decline is necessarily slowing down as we get closer to zero.
#Foreclosures #ChicagoForeclosures
Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.