Clerk Dorothy Brown Reports: Cook County Mortgage Foreclosures Spike to 338%: A Ten-Year High
Chicago — The Honorable Dorothy Brown, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, has announced that the county’s rate of mortgage foreclosures has increased by 338% since 1999.
As the nation is in the throes of a severe economic downturn, Clerk Brown has been monitoring the rates of Cook County mortgage foreclosures, which are filed in the Chancery Division of the Clerk’s Office. By the end of 2008, the year’s total number of mortgage foreclosures soared to 43,726. In contrast, in 1999, there were only 12, 935 foreclosures filed for the entire year.
“We are now processing almost four times the number of mortgage foreclosures in the Clerk’s Office than we were in 1999. That statistic is alarming and a critical indicator of just how dire our country’s financial crisis is,” said Clerk Brown.
Clerk Brown noticed that Cook County’s mortgage foreclosure rates began to steadily rise beginning in 2006, which recorded 18,916 mortgage foreclosures. The number spiked to 32,269 mortgage foreclosures in 2007, and the rate continued to increase on through the end of 2008.