Illinois foreclosure activity rate leads nation in August
(Crain's) — Illinois posted the nation's highest foreclosure activity rate in August — the first time the state has topped the list since RealtyTrac Inc. began issuing its monthly reports almost seven years ago.
A total of 17,781 residential properties had a foreclosure-related filing last month, translating to one in every 298 housing units, according to RealtyTrac, an online listing firm for distressed properties. That number jumped a whopping 42 percent from the same month last year and tops the year's previous high of 16,318 filings in May.
Most of the August foreclosure activity took place in the Chicago area, where filings were reported on 16,192 properties — or one in every 235 units — up 27 percent from July and 44 percent from August 2011.
That increase was enough to boost Chicago to No. 8 in the U.S. among metropolitan areas with a population of 200,000 or more, while Rockford came in ninth, with one filing for every 249 housing units, according to the report.
“Bucking the national trend, deferred foreclosure activity boiled over in several states in August,” Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac, said in the report. "In judicial states such as Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, this was a continuation of a trend we've been seeing for several months now.”
In Illinois, foreclosure starts rose 18 percent annually, scheduled foreclosure auctions increased 116 percent and bank repossessions jumped 41 percent compared with August 2011, RealtyTrac said.
Nationally, foreclosure filings — which include default notices, bank repossessions and auction-sale notices — were reported on one in every 681 properties, an increase of 1 percent from July but a drop of 15 percent compared with August 2011, according to RealtyTrac.
Because Illinois is one of 26 so-called judicial states in which lenders must go through the courts to seize properties, its foreclosure rate was higher, as it has taken longer for properties to work their way through the system. Foreclosure activity has risen every month this year compared with the same months in 2011, with year-over-year increases ranging from 9 percent in January to 54 percent in May.
Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada rounded out the five states with the highest foreclosure rates in August, according to the report.
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