Report: No End In Sight - Foreclosures in Cook County, IL 2010-2011
Report Introduction:
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Cook County, IL and the nation at large are suffering through a fourth year of the unprecedented mortgage foreclosure crisis. Home foreclosures are hardly a new development and have occurred at high rates since 2007. However, the most recent years have seen the scale of the problem escalate while the federal government and the nation’s largest mortgage servicers have failed to effectively address the epidemic of mortgage delinquency and default.
Home foreclosures indeed worsened in 2010 producing the highest levels of foreclosure in history. As evidenced in this report, home foreclosures are now in every city, town, and neighborhood in Cook County. The crisis, spawned by subprime mortgages originated during the reckless home lending years prior to 2007, now claims new victims as more prime-rate home loans in Chicago and its suburbs continue to fall into foreclosure.
Major Findings
This analysis of home foreclosures started and completed between January 2010 and May 2011 in Cook County, IL finds that:
- Since the start of 2010 over 92,000 housing units (72,000 residential properties) in Cook County IL fell into foreclosure. In this same time period, over 35,080 housing units (28,250 homes) were lost to foreclosure and became bank owned property in Cook County.
- The nation’s five largest banks are behind three out of every five foreclosures in Cook County. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank and US Bank have together started foreclosure on over 42,000 homes in Cook County and have seized nearly 14,000 homes in foreclosure auctions.
- Nearly half (48%) of all foreclosures in Cook County since the start of 2010 have been on home loans with prime-interest rates, evidence that the foreclosure crisis has impacted a wider population of homeowners in recent years, spreading beyond the victims of predatory subprime lending.
- Cook County is home to numerous foreclosure “hot spots”. 27% of all Cook County residents live in a neighborhood which over the last 18 months has had foreclosure activity on over 6.2% of neighborhood housing units, or a rate of more than one foreclosure per 16 homes. Furthermore, 10% of Cook County residents live in a neighborhood which has experienced recent foreclosure on upwards of 8.7% of area housing units, or a rate equivalent to three or four homes in foreclosure per city block.
- African American and Latino neighborhoods are the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis with over two times the volume of foreclosures and three times the rate of bank-owned property occurring in Cook County’s communities of color.
