The reason (the South Loop) is getting crushed is it’s only the South Loop in a good market. In a bad market, it’s no man’s land. In a good market, people assume neighborhoods will be expanding. When the market crashes, it’s like the Sycamore or Moline of Chicago.
– Prudential Rubloff Realtor Mario Greco, speaking about once-popular neighborhoods that are getting slammed with foreclosures. In the Loop community area alone, foreclosures are up almost 77 percent compared to the first nine months of 2009; they’re also up by double-digit percentages on the Near North Side, the Near South Side, the Near West Side, and in Lincoln Park (which ranks behind Austin, Belmont-Cragin, and West Ridge in total foreclosures this year).
Regarding the South Loop, the Tribune mentions four hard-hit developments by name: River City (16 foreclosures in 3Q 2010), 1620 South Michigan (12), Vision on State (11), and 1720 South Michigan (eight).
I find most newspaper coverage of the very real foreclosure problems to be depressingly poor and misleading.
Reporting percentage increases and decreases tells us almost nothing about the impact of the foreclosure crisis on particular communities.
Take Lincoln Park as an example, with its 200% year-over-year increase in completed foreclosures. The actual 3rd-quarter numbers (PDF): 27 auctions and 25 REO properties, an almost insignificant percentage of owner-occupied units in Lincoln Park.
How often do our local reporters give us foreclosures as a percentage of owner-occupied housing units, so that we can put their numbers in some realistic perspective? Very rarely.
It’s also misleading to imply, as most reporting does, that foreclosure filings in one community have the same significance that they do in another. Lincoln Park residents typically have significantly greater resources for dealing with a foreclosure filing than do residents of West Englewood, but reporters just look at the raw number of filings.
Joe, I had an almost identical post using the Near North neighborhood as an example under the Tribune story that got ate up my Tribune’s sign-in process. I didn’t copy it and had to move on rather than re-write.
There is no context to demographics and property types of each community area. Tribune prominently lists Near North as 4th in foreclosure filings behind Austin, Belmont Cragin and West Ridge.
Yet there are a zillion condos in Near North and there were almost 500 transactions in the community area excluding multi-units (491 condo sales, 4 single families). Compare that to Austin with 10 condo sales and 69 single family homes sales… about 80 total transactions excluding multi-units. Completely different impact on the communities.
Median price of condos in Near North is $350K 3rd quarter and median price of condos in Austin is $64,000. How can you list Near North 4th in foreclosures to make a point when these other neighborhoods are dealing with totally different circumstances?
We also don’t know how many Near North filings are from developer units that finally are taking the bullet…Those could get re-sold or auctioned quickly to help stabilize buildings (like some of the South Loop auctions we saw).
It’s not good…even a disatser for some people but I’m tired of these comparisons and percentages thrown out there generalizing the city. One Realtor even commented that 44% of all city transactions were distressed properties to scare people but doesn’t tell anyone where the bulk of those come from… just a handful of community areas.