Chicago Area Foreclosures Temporarily Halted

By Sean Stillmaker in News on Oct 2, 2010 3:00PM

Since the beginning of the mortgage crisis home foreclosures have been at their highest this year. But maybe the situation wouldn’t be as bad if bank employees did the job they are paid to do.

JP Morgan Chase said it's stopping 56,000 foreclosures to verify foreclosure documents were prepared properly. It was revealed that bank employees did not have the time to review the foreclosure documents, so they just signed them. The “robo-signers” put their signatures on over 10,000 foreclosure affidavits a month without ever reviewing them, the New York Times reports.

In Chicago homeowners have been disgruntled over mortgage servicers who could not show proper paperwork. “I’m sure that the banks will perfect the mortgages and move on,” a housing consultant told the Sun Times.

The newest trend in foreclosure filings has been condominiums. In Cook County there has been more than a 75 percent increase compared to the same period in 2009. Chicago had the most condominium foreclosure filings, the majority occurring in middle and higher income communities. The Loop’s filings increased by 120 percent and Rogers Park by 71 percent, according to the Woodstock Institute.

GMAC was the first financial lender that said it was halting its foreclosures. The Treasury Department, which is the owner of the company after providing it with $17 billion in bailout money, mandated their procedures to be corrected.