California based Foreclosures.com, a distressed property investment advisory firm reported today that foreclosure activity in the Chicago metro area has declined sharply in early 2005 amid a robust housing market.

"The Chicago area market is probably both one the largest and most stable among those in major U.S. urban centers," said Foreclosures.com President Alexis McGee. She went on to say that foreclosure activity in Chicagoland had declined to its baseline after a period of almost epidemic foreclosures in recent years. "In Cook County, there were 1291 new filings in March of 2005, and 1521 in April. When you include five of the peripheral counties, the totals are 2016 and 2225 respectively. Throughout 2003 and 2004, we had been seeing about 1500 in Chicagoland every week."

She said that the recent high foreclosure activity had been due in no small part to unchecked predatory lending that had plagued the inner city and, in recent years, had spread to the suburbs. "Fortunately, strong state legislation has done much to stop such abusive lending practices," said Ms. McGee.

She went on to say that, during the housing price boom of the last nine years, the Chicago housing market never overheated to cause the affordability problems that now exist on both coasts. "We rarely saw price appreciation in excess of 10% in the Chicago metro area, and now, in Cook County, the largest segment of the region, we're seeing just 5.6% year over year for the first quarter of 2005."

Nevertheless, Ms. McGee said, foreclosures never go away, no matter how healthy an economy may be. "Life is not free of misfortune," she pointed out. "Death, illness, divorce and unexpected job loss are always with us. Those events create a foreclosure baseline in any market."

Foreclosures.com has been publishing pre-foreclosure property lists and assisting investors since 1992. The company serves markets in eighteen selected California counties, the metro areas of Las Vegas NV, Phoenix AZ, Chicago IL, and New York, as well as the entire state of New Jersey.

"Our mission is to help investors locate homeowners in distress and help them find a way to save their homes, or conserve some equity for a new start by selling their way out of foreclosure", said Ms. McGee. "That's better than losing everything at a sheriff's auction

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