Chicago leads U.S. in underwater homes

The Chicago area has by far the nation’s largest number of underwater homeowners, according to a new report.

At the end of 2017, more than 135,000 Chicago-area home borrowers owed more on the mortgage than the property was worth, according to a report released by property data firm CoreLogic.

The next-largest number is in New York, at 87,000. Los Angeles, the only other U.S. metro area bigger than Chicago, had 26,800. That means Chicago had more underwater mortgages than those two metros areas combined.

More than a decade after the housing bust, the problem of underwater homeownership “remains elevated in Chicago because your housing recovery has been more sluggish relative to what we’re seeing nationally,” said Frank Nothaft, CoreLogic’s chief economist…Please click here to read Dennis Rodkin’s story in Crain’s.