RealtyTrac was much later this month in releasing their Foreclosure Market Report for February – it didn’t come out until Friday. While Chicago’s foreclosure activity hit a new low since I’ve been tracking the data it certainly seems like it’s bottoming out. Just take a look at the graph below.
The real long term decline in Chicago foreclosure activity has been in the defaults, which is what feeds the pipeline, and defaults have been flattening out. Along with the decline in defaults you can see a decline in bank repossessions.

At the national level it appears that foreclosure activity hit the lowest level since July 2006, which was basically the peak of the housing bubble. Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac,  commented:

Given that August 2006 was the peak of the housing bubble, this eight-and-a-half year low in foreclosure activity is a significant milestone and a sign that nationwide foreclosure activity is on track to return to historic norms this year — and is possibly even headed below historic norms given the skinny-jeans-tight lending standards over the past five years. In markets where foreclosures were processed more efficiently we are seeing foreclosure numbers now below pre-crisis levels in some cases. Conversely, the cleanup of deferred distress is continuing in markets where a logjam of in-limbo foreclosures is still lingering from the housing crisis — as evidenced by rebounding foreclosure activity in those markets.

Chicago Shadow Inventory

The other data point that is flattening out is Chicago’s shadow inventory of distressed properties as shown in the graph below. February had the smallest decline since I’ve been tracking the data. It only declined by 50 units from the previous month, whereas in the early days of my graph it had been declining by 1000 units per month. This is why distressed sales have been declining so much in the last year.

#realestate #chicagorealestate #foreclosures
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