"You've Caught the NET!"

Hey, gang!

The more you know about the real estate market here in Chicago, the better you understand we don't have just ONE market here.  There are DOZENS of micro-markets!

Some Chicago Neighborhoods and suburbs are selling well - although, globally, price points have dropped.  Others are struggling, especially in areas where middle and lower middle class buyers made high-leverage, stated-income, and sub-prime loans predominant.

The following blew my mind when I read it, however -

According to RealtyTrac - the company that compiles and sells foreclosure leads to Real Estate Practitioners - foreclosures across the U.S. went up 57%, year to year, from January, 2007 to January of this year.  Here in Chicago, however, they actually DROPPED 8 percent, year to year.

In Cook County - the county in which Chicago is located - foreclosure filings were FLAT year over year.  The "collar" counties surrounding Chicago were all over the map!

Will County, south and west of the city, experienced a 40% drop in filings between January, 2007 and January, 2008.  In Kane County, west of town, foreclosures fell 7% year to year.   They dropped36% in McHenry County, far northwest of Chicago, bordering on Wisconsin. 

Foreclosure filings did increase 22% in DuPage County within the last year, while ex-urban Kendall County, one of the fastest-growing areas in the Chicago Metro Area, but a nearly 90 minute daily commute to The Loop, suffered a 78% surge in foreclosure filings.

T. J. McKinney, a spokesman for the Chicago-based Illinois Foreclosure Listing Service, an independent mortgage data research firm. says the reason behind the drop is hard to explain. "Possible factors may include the holiday court schedule delaying filings by attorneys, lenders working more diligently with homeowners to postpone foreclosures or the gradual tightening of lending standards that began in late 2006 and early 2007."

In any event, the numbers show, despite public perception, that the nationwide increase in foreclosure filings is not global to every area of the country.  Although foreclosures are happening with high visibility here, and although many unqualified borrowers took advantage of unwise funding programs to get into their new home, the comparative lower levels of housing speculation here in Chicago may have kept our housing market in better check now, in 2008.

For more info, and links to a story by Mary Umberger and Alex Viega's story in the February 26th Edition of The Chicago Tribune, as well as links to RealtyTrac Foreclosure Data, please visit our Team Blog Center, and our posting today at BlogChicagoHomes.com.

DEAN & DEAN'S TEAM CHICAGO