Since the housing crisis began, many for-sale single-family homes (SFHs) in the region have become rental units or are now vacant. This has diverse implications for how the region’s communities recover from the housing crisis and manage a housing stock that has traditionally been owner-occupied. Recent data from the American Community Survey (ACS), which provides a rolling...
Vacant Properties
Vacant and foreclosed properties exact potentially destabilizing costs on entire neighborhoods and communities by lowering property values, raising crime rates, and straining municipal resources.
High concentrations of vacant and foreclosed properties are clearly a problem in the Chicago region. Completed foreclosure auctions, which result in the lender gaining ownership of a property, increased in the region by 227 percent between 2006 and 2009. Demand for these homes, despite state and federal interventions designed to encourage home purchases, remains low.
New models must be developed to allow families to stay in their homes, perhaps as renters, so that communities remain stable, valuable housing stock is preserved, and municipalities and servicers do not have the added liability of maintaining and securing vacant property. Municipalities need more tools for purchasing, maintaining, and returning the recent influx of vacant and foreclosed properties to productive use.
This page details the efforts of the Regional Home Ownership Preservation Initiative (RHOPI) vacant and foreclosed properties task force to lead municipalities on maximizing the impact of limited vacant property resources; promote cross-jurisdictional collaboration, land banking, and regional strategy; and position the region for success in obtaining federal, state, and local resources to stabilize neighborhoods and mitigate the effects of vacant properties on communities.
The Fourth Quarter 2012 IHS Cook County House Price Index reflects house price changes on properties with repeat sales from the first quarter of 1997 through the fourth quarter of 2012. The IHS House Price Index tracks quarterly price changes for the four primary residential property types found in the County: single family homes, condominium units, small rental buildings with two to four...
The West Cook County Housing Collaborative and the Chicago Southland Housing and Community Development Collaborative received nearly $11 million in federal funding from the IKE Disaster Recovery Program to further their interjurisdictional work on stabilizing communities in south and west Cook County in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. The funding will help hard-hit communities...
When it comes to setting priorities on pressing housing issues, municipalities across the Chicago region are putting aside their differences and working together to improve livability...
By the Center for Housing Policy
When the Dodd-Frank bill created a third round of Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding (NSP3), it required grantees to establish procedures creating a preference for affordable rental housing development. HUD asked grantees to include information on the affordable rental housing preference in...
By the Center for Housing Policy
This case study focuses on American Residential Properties, Inc., one of several investment firms in the Phoenix region that is responding to the high level of foreclosures by buying and holding properties while responsibly renting and managing them out to qualified households. This approach reduces the risk of homes...
Governor Pat Quinn recently announced a major investment in stabilizing some of the communities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. The Illinois Building Blocks Pilot Program would put $55 million towards rehabilitating and promoting the sales of vacant properties in Berwyn, Chicago Heights...
By Institute for Housing Studies, DePaul University
Challenges around accessing sufficient financing for buying, rehabilitating and refinancing small multifamily rental properties may be a threat to the supply of affordable rental housing in Cook County, Illinois according to...
The Federal Reserve Board on Thursday released a policy statement reiterating that statutes and Federal Reserve regulations permit rental of residential properties acquired in foreclosure as part of an orderly disposition strategy. The statement also outlines supervisory expectations for residential rental activities.
The general policy of the Federal Reserve is that banking...
The Eastgate neighborhood in Park Forest, a village thirty miles south of Chicago, has seen its share of troubles. Relatively isolated from other development by the Sauk Trail Woods Forest Preserve, many of the neighborhood’s 300-odd homes are in poor condition. Crime and blight have been on the rise, causing the Village of Park Forest to invest more and more funds into finding solutions...