Chicago area suffers highest home foreclosure rate in Illinois - 07/30/09 Crain's

Crain's Chicago Business
July 30, 2009

Chicago area suffers highest home foreclosure rate in Illinois

(AP) — The Chicago area’s foreclosure rate rose more than 30% in the first half of 2009 compared with the same period last year, according to a report.

More than 63,500 properties got a foreclosure filing from January through June, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service.

Chicago’s rate of foreclosure filings, one in every 59 houses, or about 1.7%, ranked it 39th on a list of 203 areas in the U.S. and highest among the Illinois areas in the RealtyTrac report.

Foreclosure activity was up 15 percent in the Rockford area and 40 percent in the metro area that includes Rock Island and Moline and Davenport, Iowa.

Chicago-area foreclosure activity was up 21.6 percent compared with the second half of 2008, RealtyTrac said.

Increases are blamed on growing unemployment rather than risky mortgages.

On the bright side, foreclosure activity fell 22 percent in the Peoria area, 29 percent around Springfield and 11 percent in the Champaign-Urbana area from last year.

The first half’s highest foreclosure rate was in the Las Vegas area, with one out of every 13 properties, or 7.45 percent, getting a foreclosure filing.