For several years, the U.S. housing market has been in the midst of a foreclosure crisis with no clear end in sight. Although we began to see signs of hope in June 2011 that the overall problem is no longer growing, many metro areas—especially in judicial foreclosure states—continue to struggle.

Since March 2009, a few metropolitan areas have seen their foreclosure rates grow steadily. These include several metropolitan areas in Florida, as well as two of America’s largest metropolitan areas – New York City and Chicago. The foreclosure rate has risen by 3.8 percentage points in Chicago and 3.7 percentage points in New York City since March of 2009, when we began tracking these data.

Foreclosure Rates Have Steadily Risen In Florida, New York And Illinois

New York, Illinois, and Florida all require judicial foreclosure proceedings, in which a court makes the final decision about a property before it can exit the foreclosure process. This process creates a significant backlog of properties in foreclosure, LPS Applied Analytics reports, and foreclosure inventories in judicial states continue to hit new highs. In New York, it would take lenders 57 years to clear their inventories at the current pace of foreclosure sales; in Illinois, it would take 10 years.

Quickly resolving the status of these properties is critical to stabilize communities and housing markets.

For the complete data analysis on serious delinquency, see “Serious Delinquency Rates - 100 Largest Metro Areas, June 2011.” For data on all 366 metropolitan areas, visit Foreclosure-Response.org.