Illinois Foreclosures Fall, Still Among Highest In Country

Illinois had the fourth-highest rate of foreclosure filings in the United States for the first quarter of 2018, according to a new report. For the first quarter of 2018, Illinois had 12,485 housing units with a foreclosure filing.

Nationally, foreclosure filings for the first quarter of 2018 increased 4 percent when compared to the previous quarter but are still down 19 percent from a year ago, according to ATTOM Data, a multi-sourced property database. Foreclosure filings for the first quarter of 2018 are also 32 percent below the pre-recession average.

Illinois had a 4.7 percent decrease in foreclosure filings when compared to the previous quarter and a 25.26 percent decrease in foreclosure filings when compared to the previous year.

Illinois Sees Big Drop In Foreclosures In 2018

Nationwide, one in every 706 U.S. housing units had a foreclosure filing in the first quarter of 2018. In Illinois, one in every 425 housing units was in foreclosure.

For the month of March, foreclosure filings were up 21 percent from an all-time low in February but still down 11 percent when compared to a year ago. In Illinois, foreclosure filings for March were up 40.95 percent when compared to February but down 14.87 percent when compared to the previous year.

In the first quarter of 2018, lenders started the foreclosure process on 92,703 properties in the country and a total of 189,870 properties had a foreclosure filing. Here’s how many foreclosure filings Illinois counties had in the first quarter of 2018:

• Cook - 6,088
• De Kalb - 113
• DuPage - 704
• Grundy - 25
• Kane - 464
• Kendall - 172
• Lake - 700
• McHenry - 414
• Will - 909

Illinois had a year-over-year decrease in repossessions of 41 percent. Nationally, repossessions were down 2 percent compared to the previous quarter and down 28 percent when compared to a year ago.

Along with Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina had the highest foreclosure rates for the first quarter of 2018. South Dakota, North Dakota, West Virginia, Montana and Vermont had the lowest rates of foreclosure filings in the U.S. for the first quarter of 2018, according to the report.

“Less than half of all active foreclosures are now tied to loans originated during the last housing bubble, one of several data milestones in this report showing that the U.S. housing market has mostly cleared out the backlog of bad loans that triggered the housing and financial crisis nearly a decade ago,” Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions, said in a press release.

The report is based on publicly recorded and published foreclosure filings collected from more than 2,200 counties nationwide.

Photo via Shutterstock

Browse new homes for sale in your neighborhood: