Foreclosure Research - Press
March 11, 2011
By Michelle Stoffel
March 11, 2011
Foreclosures continue to rise in Arlington Heights, bringing additional costs to the village, though officials say there’s little they can do on the local level.
According to statistics gathered by the Woodstock Institute, a non-profit research and policy...
Press Clipping • Underwater homeowners, beware walking away (Chicago Journal)
March 9, 2011
By Don DeBat
March 9, 2011
The Chicago-area housing market is fighting an uphill battle toward that level playing field every home builder, condo developer, Realtor and home buyer hopes to see again in the next few years.
The good news is the downtown Chicago rental apartment market appears to be...
Press Clipping • Foreclosure ‘catastrophe’ continues in Berwyn (My Suburban Life)
March 9, 2011
March 9, 2011
Although the stock market and other major economic indicators such as gross domestic product continue to rise, foreclosures in Berwyn are also climbing. The number of local foreclosure filings jumped from 659 in 2009 to 791 last year — an increase of 20 percent — according to a...
Press Clipping • Sweet Home Chicago: If not now, when? (Chicago Reporter)
March 9, 2011
By Alden Loury
March 9, 2011
It's clear that Chicago needs more affordable housing. Nearly half of Chicago households paying a mortgage and nearly half of Chicago households paying rent are spending 30 percent or more of their household income on housing and associated costs, according to an...
March 5, 2011
By Jennifer Davis
March 5, 2011
For two-plus years, Francois and Kimberly Holtermann fought to save their El Paso home from foreclosure. They lost on Feb. 24.
It took all of 30 seconds.
At exactly 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24, attorney Blake Dunlap, acting on behalf of a Chicago law firm, Pierce...
March 3, 2011
By Taniesha Robinson
March 3, 2011
A significant portion of Chicago-area foreclosures are nearly invisible to the casual observer. While boarded-up homes are obvious, foreclosed condos – which make up one in five foreclosures – leave few visual clues.
Condos have carved out a distinct ditch in...
Press Clipping • About lenders and all of those empty houses (Chicago Tribune)
February 21, 2011
By John McCarron
February 21, 2011
Too bad Isidra and Wenceslao Martinez couldn't make it to Davos, Switzerland, a couple of weeks ago to hear the CEO of JPMorgan Chase explain how his bank is getting a bad rap for the foreclosure/bailout/Great Recession thing.
Money has been scarce in the...
Press Clipping • An Election Day Primer: The Aldermanic Races (Progress Illinois)
February 21, 2011
By Robert Dietz
February 21, 2011
There's a lot at stake in the City Council races. Retirements in wards throughout the city have led to an explosion of interest in running for the council. All tolled the ballots tomorrow will have 239 different candidates running for City Council. There will be...
February 17, 2011
By Mick Dumke
February 17, 2011
In the eyes of Lisa Thomas, the needs of the 15th Ward are so extensive it is difficult to list them all.
“Things have been going downhill,” said Ms. Thomas, a mother of four and a 12-year resident of the South Side ward. “We need new homes and better schools. We...
February 16, 2011
By Jennifer Johnson
February 16, 2011
Foreclosures continued to increase in Park Ridge last year but at a rate that was lower than the Chicago region's average, a report from a foreclosure research group shows.
The Woodstock Institute's 2010 fourth-quarter report on foreclosures in the six-county...
Press Clipping • Walking Away From Foreclosure (Chicago Tonight/WTTW)
February 15, 2011
By Elizabeth Brackett
February 15, 2011
This is what some lenders are doing: they file a foreclosure and then ‘walk away’ because they deem it too expensive to maintain long-term vacant homes. And it’s going to cost Chicago some $36 million, according to a recent report from the Woodstock...
Press Clipping • No slowdown in 2010 Evanston foreclosures (Evanston Review)
February 15, 2011
By Karen Berkowitz
February 15, 2011
More Evanston homeowners fell far enough behind on their mortgage payments in 2010 that lenders and mortgage service companies lowered the boom in Cook County Circuit Court.
Across Evanston, foreclosures were filed on 399 properties in 2010, a 19 percent...
Press Clipping • Chicago foreclosure filings surge: Woodstock (Housing Wire)
February 11, 2011
By Christine Ricciardi
February 11, 2011
Foreclosure filings in the six-county Chicago metropolitan area rose 14% between 2009 and 2010, and are expected to trend upward during this year.
Nearly 80,000 new foreclosures were filed in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, according...
February 11, 2011
By Micah Maidenberg
February 11, 2011
As usual, there's a lot to pick through in the Woodstock Institute's latest analysis (PDF) of home foreclosure activity in greater Chicagoland. One trend that stuck out during a review of the new data: there was a "dramatic" increase of more than 25 percent in...
February 11, 2011
By Micah Maidenberg
February 11, 2011
Ed Smith's retirement last November means voters in Chicago's 28th ward, which includes Garfield Park as well as parts of Austin, will head to the polls on February 22 and not see his name on the ballot for the first time in 27 years.
The turnover comes at a...
February 10, 2011
By Ashley Gross
February 10, 2011
For a sixth year in a row, foreclosure filings climbed in the Chicago region last year.
Collar counties saw big year-over-year jumps. That’s according to data from the housing research group Woodstock Institute.
Polo Fabian works for Consumer Credit Counseling...
Press Clipping • Processing woes lower mortgage default notices (Chicago Tribune)
February 10, 2011
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
February 11, 2011
More than 8,300 homeowners in Illinois received notices from lenders that they’d defaulted on their mortgages and had foreclosures proceedings initiated against them last month, according to a monthly foreclosure report issued Thursday by Web site...
Press Clipping • Unfinished Foreclosures (First Business News)
February 8, 2011
Homeowners aren't the only ones walking away from homes -- banks and mortgage servicers are abandoning properties as well.
Press Clipping • Bank 'Walk-Aways' (American Banker)
January 27, 2011
By Kate Berry
January 27, 2011
Mortgage servicers have refused to complete foreclosures on thousands of vacant homes in Chicago because they do not want to pay the cost of maintaining the homes, according to a report this month from the Woodstock Institute, a local nonprofit.
The companies'...
January 27, 2011
By Frank Kalman
January 27, 2011
More homes were repossessed in the Chicago area last year than in all but one U.S. metro area, according to a new report.
Lenders took back 45,555 properties here in 2010, a 20% increase from 2009, according to a report released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., an...
Press Clipping • A sudden demolition (Community Media Workshop Newstips)
January 27, 2011
By Curtis Black
January 27, 2011
After a West Side activist group announced plans to take over and board up a building abondoned following foreclosure, the city moved within hours to have the building demolished, said Elce Redmond of the South Austin Coalition.
“They got wind of what we were going...
Press Clipping • Clean It Up Or Face Jail Time (Progress Illinois)
January 26, 2011
By Micah Maidenberg
January 26, 2011
Owners of dangerous vacant buildings in Chicago could face up to six months in jail for failing to properly maintain their properties, according to an ordinance that advanced out of the City Council's buildings committee yesterday and now heads to the full...
Press Clipping • Abandoned foreclosures: Chicago's lost homes (Chicago Reporter)
January 18, 2011
By Megan Cottrell
January 18, 2011
We all know that there are a ton of foreclosures in Chicago. How many? More than 45,000 in the city's metro area in 2010. But there's a slice of those, and not a small one, that falls into a different category. They're almost like ghost homes - not really among...
January 14, 2011
By Micah Maidenberg
January 14, 2011
A new phrase is entering Chicago's political and housing policy lexicon: "red flag properties." The Woodstock Institute coined the term to describe the increasing number of vacant, deteriorating homes in the city that have gone into the foreclosure process but...
January 14, 2011
January 14, 2011
There’s been no slowdown in the foreclosure wave that has swept the entire Chicagoland area in the last few years.
“According to RealtyTrac, the online marketplace for foreclosure properties, 45,555 homes became bank-owned last year in the area between the Wisconsin border and...
Press Clipping • Economic outrage du jour: Banks take a powder (Daily Kos)
January 14, 2011
January 14, 2011
Over the past couple of years there's been plenty of smugness and disdain pitched in the direction of people who have walked away from mortgages. Never mind that many of them were lured into loans they couldn't afford, lost jobs and couldn't find replacements, saw income from...
January 13, 2011
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
January 13, 2011
A new type of property is adding to neighborhood blight: the bank walkaway.
Research to be released Thursday, the first of its kind locally, identifies 1,896 "red flag" homes in Chicago — most of them are in distressed African-American neighborhoods — that...
January 13, 2011
By Kerry Curry
January 13, 2011
Lenders who abandon foreclosed properties are an increasing concern in Chicago where thousands of vacant homes are threatening the stability of neighborhoods, says a report released Thursday by Woodstock Institute.
Administrative costs of dealing with vacant...
January 13, 2011
By Chuck Sudo
January 13, 2011
It looks like not only homeowners that are walking away from their homes when they get underwater on their mortgages. A new study released by the Woodstock Institute found that more mortgage lenders are walking away from homes as they realize they can't recoup the...
Press Clipping • Banks walk away from some foreclosures in Chicago (WBEZ-FM/Chicago)
January 13, 2011
By Ashley Gross
January 13, 2011
A new study says banks are choosing to walk away instead of completing some foreclosures, leaving buildings abandoned.
The housing research group Woodstock Institute says it identified about 2,000 of these vacant homes in Chicago. Here’s what happens – a homeowner...