ATTOM Data Solutions/ RealtyTrac released their Midyear 2017 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™ today and it continues to show that our foreclosure nightmare is slowly fading into a distant, bad memory. Chicago foreclosure activity came close to breaching the low set 17 months ago and defaults came within a hair’s breadth of puncturing the low of exactly one year ago. That latter point is exceptionally good news since that’s the front end of the pipeline.
It’s all in the graph below. Given the month to month volatility it’s helpful to look back one year ago and realize that total foreclosure activity has fallen by 26% since then. Nevertheless, Chicago remains among the top ten metro areas in foreclosure rates.
The country as a whole is also making steady progress as shown in the graph below, though you can clearly see that foreclosure activity remains above pre-bubble levels. RealtyTrac makes the comparison to the pre-recession period of Q1 2006 to Q3 2007 (a bit later in the game) and notes that foreclosure activity is now 21% below the average of that period. In just the last year it has dropped by 22% and it is at the lowest quarterly level since Q2 2006.
RealtyTrac confirms that Chicago foreclosure activity is also now below the pre-recession period, though it sounds like that is not the case for about half of the larger metro areas.
Daren Blomquist, senior vice president with ATTOM Data Solutions, commented on one counter-trend:
Although foreclosures are fading overall, there has been a notable an [sic] uptick in foreclosures completed by some nonbank entities — counter to the sharp downward foreclosure trend among big banks and government-backed loans. These divergent foreclosure trends are likely the result of the big banks and government agencies selling off distressed loans over the past few years to nonbank entities that are now foreclosing on an increasing volume of that deferred distress.
Chicago Shadow Inventory
However, it’s a little disappointing that the number of Chicago homes in some stage of the foreclosure process remains stubbornly above 10,000 although it has been coming down lately as you can see in the graph below. It’s just that we actually went in the wrong direction in June, with an increase of 91 units.
At least we’ve dealt with more than 72% of the problem that we had when I first started to track this data.
But it looks like government continues to stand in the way of the country making further progress on this problem. The amount of time it takes to complete a foreclosure hit a new record high of 883 days, which is up from 631 days a year ago. WTF?! That’s going in the wrong direction.
And Illinois is one of the worst states with an average time of 1,059 days (that’s almost 3 years!) compared to Virginia, which is the best state at only 176 days. So when you wonder why there are still so many boarded up buildings in certain parts of the city now you know why.
#Foreclosures #ChicagoForeclosures
Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service discount real estate brokerage. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market, get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry, or you just think he’s the next Kurt Vonnegut 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.