Foreclosures fall in Illinois
June 17th, 2010 categories: Chicago Real Estate News, Economic Recovery, Foreclosures, Housing Market
RealtyTrac.com has been the bearer of bad news lately. The online foreclosure data site has each month during the housing slump, it seems, provided us with the news that housing foreclosures are steadily rising.
This month, though, RealtyTrac actually brought some good news for Chicago: The number of housing foreclosures in Illinois fell in May, according to the company.
Residential foreclosures dropped more than 20 percent in May when compared with April, according to RealtyTrac. This means that slightly more than 15,000 state housing units, or one in every 350, received a foreclosure notice in the month.
A foreclosure notice, by the way, doesn’t have to be an actual foreclosure. It could be a bank notice, scheduled auction or bank repossession.
Granted, this is still far too many foreclosures. But Illinois saw a bigger drop in foreclosures than did the country as a whole. RealtyTrac.com reported that the United States in general saw a 3 percent drop in housing foreclosures in May.
Overall, though, Illinois housing foreclosures were still up 38 percent from where they stood in May of 2009. And across the country, one in every 400 homes – nearly 323,000 households – received foreclosure notices in May. That’s up 0.5 percent from the same month one year earlier.
I’m happy to see the foreclosure numbers go down. Few things hurt the overall economy of an area, whether it’s Chicago or the entire country, like housing foreclosures. Think about it: When a family loses its house that family is obviously devastated, both emotionally and financially. A housing foreclosure stays on the credit reports of former homeowners for seven years, making it extremely difficult for these consumers to borrow money at reasonable rates during this time.
But housing foreclosures also burden banks and lenders. These financial institutions don’t want to take back these homes. That’s not how they make their money. They don’t want to have to sell these homes at lower prices.
Finally, foreclosures hurt neighborhoods, too. It’s difficult for sellers to attract good offers for their residences when there’s a foreclosure two doors down going for $50,000 less.
So let’s hope that RealtyTrac’s latest bit of good news isn’t a blip. Let’s hope it’s a trend, one that will help the housing market and the economy recover at a faster pace.
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