I’m afraid that tracking Chicago foreclosure activity has gotten really boring. Last week RealtyTrac released their May foreclosure activity report and all it showed is the same pattern we’ve been seeing for several months now: no real change to speak of from the most recent months but down from last year. In fact, foreclosure activity has been down year over year for 42 out of the last 43 months. You can check out the trend in my graph below.
I have to believe that this represents a bottoming of foreclosure activity. Unfortunately, my data doesn’t go back far enough to get a sense of we are at pre-bubble levels or not. However, Black Knight Financial Services provides default and foreclosure start data going back to 2000 and it shows that both of those metrics are already pretty much at pre-bubble levels, though they might still be on the decline.
Chicago Shadow Inventory
Similarly, the inventory of Chicago homes that are in the foreclosure process seems to have bottomed as well as you can see in the graph below. Again, I’m lacking the perspective on how this compares to pre-bubble levels. To make further progress in whittling away at this shadow inventory we would either need further declines in default rates/ foreclosure starts or they would need to pick up the pace of foreclosure completions.
#ChicagoForeclosures #Foreclosures
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.