RealtyTrac came out with their October Foreclosure Market Report yesterday and it shows a continued upward trend in foreclosure activity for Chicago. I don’t pay too much attention to the month to month fluctuations in these numbers but there is a clear trend over the last 10 months where each month has been above the previous year (except March which was flat) and you can see the upward trend since the middle of last year. But if you look closely at the graph below you can sorta kinda maybe see that the activity is flattening out a bit???
What is clear is that there are far fewer foreclosures in Chicago than there were in 2010 and 2011. And that’s consistent with the national picture, for which we have a much longer history. The long term trend is clearly down and it appears that a higher percentage of foreclosure starts are actually resulting in completions – which is a good thing because that means they are working through the backlog. Note that the peak in foreclosure activity actually occurred in 2009. You can click on the graph below for a much larger view.
