Close your windows! Lock your doors! Turn out the lights and hide! The zombies are coming! No, seriously, they are, but these zombies are not a threat to your life. These are zombie foreclosures, and they seem to be increasing nationwide. What are zombie foreclosures? Well, let’s say a homeowner who is not making mortgage payments gets a foreclosure notice. Instead of trying to fight it, the homeowner decides it’s not worth it and moves out. Subsequently the bank does not complete the foreclosure process. Wait a minute, why didn’t the bank foreclose? You may have noticed that 1) the real estate market crashed a few years back; 2) many homeowners are facing or fighting foreclosure; 3) the economy’s been troubled. As a result, there is quite a backlog of foreclosures. Moreover, some banks don’t even want to foreclose because they don’t want to be stuck with the burden of… read more →
The Illinois Condominium Property Act states what a Buyer needs to pay to the association when purchasing foreclosed property from a lender. A blog post I wrote some years ago talks about that. But the reality is, there’s a lot of confusion out there. A new bill introduced recently to the state House makes some proposals to help clarify the prospective buyer’s obligations. Specifically:1) Anyone who purchases a foreclosed condominium from the mortgagee of the condominium will be responsible for up to 9 months of regular back assessments.2) The association can include legal fees and court costs incurred because of the non-payment of assessments, but the TOTAL bill to the new buyer cannot be greater than 9 months of regular back assessments total.3) Any foreclosure sale notice must specifically state that anyone who buys the property from the mortgagee may be responsible for up to 9 months of back assessments.4) Any proposed buyer… read more →
According to RealtyTrac, in Illinois and around the country, foreclosures went down during the first quarter of 2013. While Illinois’ rate of foreclosure activity dropped nearly 5% from the first quarter of 2012, Illinois still ranks the third highest in foreclosure activity in the country. Only Florida and Nevada have more foreclosures than Illinois. Chicago, Cook County, and all of the collar counties, with the exception of DuPage County, had reduced foreclosure activity between January 1 and March 31, 2013. DuPage County’s foreclosure rate increased over both the first and last quarters of 2012. Nationally, 152,500 properties had foreclosures filed againt them in March of 2013. That’s actually a little less than the number of new foreclosures filed in February 2012, and about 23% less than the number of new foreclosures filed in March 2012.
In a recent case, OneWest Bank, FSB v. Hawthorne, 2013 IL App (5th) 110475 (February 4, 2013), the appellate court basically told a homeowner who was trying to appeal her foreclosure that she should not have ignored it for so long, and that she should have acted with diligence. The bank filed its foreclosure on April 5, 2010, and after trying and failing to reach Ms. Hawthorne directly, filed a motion for default judgment on June 21, 2010. Judgment was entered in the bank’s favor just three days later. That fall, Hawthorne file a motion, pro se, to have the judgment vacated. She hired an attorney to assist her a little later. However, neither she nor her attorney appeared in court for the hearing. The property was eventually sold at a public auction in April 2011, and the court entered the order approving the sale in May. Shortly thereafter, Hawthorne tried to get… read more →