The Foreclosure Report

Chicago Area Foreclosures Up 57%

One city bucked the trend last month. "Foreclosures on Chicago-area homes spiked 57% in April while the national rate moved in the opposite direction. There were 6,102 residential properties in the 14-county area that were in some stage of the foreclosure process in April. That was higher than March’s figures and the third straight month of increases for the Chicago area."

"In Illinois,, the April rate was 40% higher than March. Chicago’s foreclosure rate was higher than Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York, but lower than Dallas-Fort Worth. In Illinois, 2.32% of the 1.2 million mortgages tracked by the MBA were late in the fourth quarter."

"'Deliquencies tend to reach their peak three to five years after origination,' said Michael Fratantoni, a senior director at the Mortgage Bankers Association. 'We had an enormous refinance boom in 2002-2003 and those loans are just hitting peak deliquency rates.'"

"Nearly all, 95%, of the homes in the foreclosure process in April were in the Chicago metro area. Of those homes, nearly 66% were in Cook County. April’s home foreclosure rate in Cook County was also 66% higher than March and 2.4 times higher than the national average."

"Grundy County had the lowest total number of homes in foreclosure of the nine Illinois counties in the metro area with 12, however, the figure marked a 71% increase from March. Kane County had highest percent increase of 143% from March with 170 properties in the foreclosure stage."

"DuPage County’s 1,161 homes in the foreclosure process in April was a 59% increase from March while Lake County’s 606 homes represented a 26% increase."

posted by Ben Jones @ 1:19 PM