Thursday at 7:43 a.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
A boarded-up house in foreclosure, left, in the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood on Chicago's North Side, July 13, 2010. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune)
Foreclosure activity in Illinois was on the rise again last month, after a slowdown earlier this year caused by investigations into lenders’ foreclosure processes.
During March, lenders filed notices of default and started foreclosure proceedings against 7,428 homes in Illinois while scheduling court-supervised auctions against 1,919 properties and repossessing another 2,706 homes that became bank-owned. The overall number of properties caught up in the foreclosure process last month, 12,053, was a decline of 15 percent from March 2010 but up 25 percent since February. Get the full story »
April 12 at 10:27 a.m.
Filed under:
Investing,
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
Fannie Mae is bringing back its offer to help pay closing costs to move some foreclosed homes from its books into the hands of owner-occupants. Get the full story »
March 10 at 7:38 a.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
A foreclosed home up for sale in Elgin in 2009. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The number of homes in foreclosure plummeted in both Illinois and the U.S. in February, but despite the slowing flow, many analysts believe the foreclosure pipeline has not turned off yet.
In Illinois, 5,568 homeowners received notices that their mortgages had fallen into default and foreclosure proceedings had been initiated, while 1,471 properties were scheduled to go to auction and another 2,553 homes were repossessed by lenders, RealtyTrac said Thursday.
Altogether, the 9,592 notices related to a foreclosure last month showed a decline of 27.13 from January and 44.59 percent from February 2010. Get the full story »
Feb. 3 at 10:07 a.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
From Crain’s Real Estate Daily | Sportscaster Mike Adamle faces a foreclosure suit on his Evanston home after failing to pay off a $1.1-million loan that matured in August. According to a complaint filed by PrivateBank & Trust Co., Adamle and his wife, Kim, owe the bank about 30 percent more than the $920,000 than they paid in July 2005 for the home on Lincoln Street near Ryan Field.
Dec. 2, 2010 at 7:53 a.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip/file)
The number of foreclosed homes sold in Illinois during the third quarter fell sharply from the previous three months, but buyers who did enter the market were able to buy properties at prices more than 40 percent below the traditional market.
RealtyTrac reported Thursday that 6,844 foreclosed homes were sold in Illinois during the three months ended Sept. 30, a 24.34 percent from the second quarter. Still, sales of foreclosures represented almost 24 percent of all transactions.
The average foreclosed home selling price was $142,214 during the quarter, a 41.34 percent discount from the non-foreclosure average market price. Get the full story »
Nov. 16, 2010 at 3:16 p.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
An abandoned foreclosed house in Highland Park in 2009. (David Trotman-Wilkins/Chicago Tribune)
Mortgage servicers would not be able to put a home into foreclosure until they could detail specifically why all modification efforts failed, under legislation proposed Tuesday by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
The bill, which would amend the Illinois Mortgage Foreclosure Act, also is intended to prevent the practice of cutting corners and rubber-stamping foreclosure files as accurate as they head toward judgment, a practice that has drawn headlines and spawned an ongoing investigation into lenders’ internal practices by the attorneys general of all 50 states. Get the full story »
Oct. 28, 2010 at 6:55 a.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Associated Press
The foreclosure crisis intensified across a majority of large U.S. metropolitan areas this summer, with Chicago and Seattle — cities outside of the states that have shouldered the worst of the housing downturn — seeing a sharp increase in foreclosure warnings.
Oct. 19, 2010 at 11:03 a.m.
Filed under:
Economy,
Real estate
By Becky Schlikerman | Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is ordering his deputies to stop carrying out mortgage foreclosure evictions — again. Dart did the same two years ago after finding out many of those his deputies were forcing from their homes had paid their rent faithfully and didn’t know their landlords were having financial problems.
Oct. 14, 2010 at 6:38 a.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
More than 9,000 homes in Illinois were scheduled to go to foreclosure auction or were repossessed by banks in September, as mortgage lenders continued to push foreclosures through the system to ease the backlog of failed loan modifications, RealtyTrac reported Thursday.
Nationally for the entire third quarter, the company said, the number of foreclosure auctions scheduled nationally totaled more than 372,000, the highest quarterly total since the company began tracking foreclosures in 2005. Meanwhile, the more than 288,000 bank repossessions hit a record high for the third quarter.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, almost 26,000 Illinois homes were scheduled to be auctioned or were repossessed by lenders. Get the full story »
Oct. 13, 2010 at 5:01 p.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
Illinois regulators have “outed” four mortgage servicers that it said did not respond to requests for information on their foreclosure procedures. Get the full story »
Oct. 13, 2010 at 2:37 p.m.
Filed under:
Real estate,
Updated
By Reuters
Protestors at a foreclosure and eviction rally in Menlo Park, Calif., Sept. 24, 2010. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
All 50 states launched a joint investigation of the mortgage industry on Wednesday, a move some experts fear will cause uncertainty and threaten the recovery of the fragile housing market.
The state attorneys general are looking at allegations some banks used shoddy or fraudulent paperwork to remove struggling borrowers from their homes during a foreclosure crisis that is one of the most visible wounds of the 2007-2009 recession.
“We are in the fourth year of a housing and economic crisis that was brought on by lax practices of the mortgage lending industry,” Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson said in a statement. “The latest allegations of corner cutting and slipshod paperwork are troubling, but perhaps not surprising.” Get the full story »
Oct. 12, 2010 at 9:43 a.m.
Filed under:
Economy,
Policy,
Politics,
Real estate
By Reuters
The White House on Tuesday expressed opposition to a broad moratorium on home foreclosures, warning there could be some unintended consequences for the housing market. Get the full story »
Oct. 8, 2010 at 5:26 p.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Reuters
U.S. lawmakers pushed for the country’s largest mortgage lenders to suspend foreclosures in all 50 states after Bank of America Corp announced on Friday it would temporarily halt evictions nationwide.
BofA, the largest U.S. mortgage servicer, is the first U.S. bank to institute a nationwide freeze on foreclosures, expanding on a 23-state suspension announced last week while it conducts a review of its procedures. Get the full story »
Oct. 8, 2010 at 10:29 a.m.
Filed under:
Real estate
By Dow Jones Newswires
A Bank of America branch in Charlotte, N.C. (AP)
Bank of America Corp. is placing a moratorium on all foreclosure proceedings and sales across the U.S. due to mounting political pressure on large U.S. banks to examine foreclosure-documentation problems.
The nation’s largest bank by assets is the first financial institution to stop all foreclosure actions due to revelations that the banking industry had used “robo-signers” — people who sign hundreds of documents a day without reviewing their contents — when foreclosing on homes. Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Ally Financial Inc. last week postponed foreclosures in 23 states where a court’s approval is required to foreclose on a home. Get the full story »
Sep. 29, 2010 at 4:28 p.m.
Filed under:
Investigations,
Real estate
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has asked Ally Financial to freeze all foreclosures and not initiate any new ones against Illinois homeowners until an investigation of its foreclosure practices is complete.
According to the state, more than 100,000 Illinois homeowners have mortgages that are serviced by the company, including 78,500 first mortgages.
An Ally employee testified in a Florida court case that he signed at least 10,000 affidavits a month to process foreclosures without reviewing the underlying paperwork and that those documents were then filed with the court as evidence of Ally’s rights to foreclose on the homes. Get the full story »
