By Jim Campen November 29, 2010 In the 1980s and early 1990s, racial discrimination in mortgage lending resulted in less access to home loans for predominantly black and Latino borrowers and neighborhoods. Home mortgages were a fairly standardized product,...
Permanent modifications continue to grow increasingly slowly and trial modifications are still dropping, though October marked the end of the six-month streak of double-digit decreases in active trial modifications. Chicago region permanent loan modifications rose by 3.1 percent from...
We gathered top leaders from financial institutions and community groups to discuss the scope of the problem and current approaches to improving access to credit. Our Senior Vice President Geoff Smith presented the findings of our credit score report...
By Dennis Rodkin November 10, 2010 In an era when foreclosures are rampant, Illinois’s 8th District may have tapped a foreclosed homeowner to represent it in Congress. Final votes are still being tallied, but on Tuesday, Joe Walsh, who...
By Nick Carey November 11, 2010 America’s housing mess came to the western part of Humboldt Park long before it hit wealthier neighborhoods, but like much of the country the crisis is apparently going nowhere. “Everything is on hold...
The fact that the current modification programs, such as the Home Affordable Modification Program, are voluntary means that homeowners have little power to force reluctant mortgage loan servicers to the bargaining table. While several “judicial foreclosure” jurisdictions (where foreclosures...
By Micah Maidenberg November 10, 2010 When President Barack Obama talks about the struggling housing market as a “headwind”, one assumes he’s thinking of issues like this: nearly one-third of single-family homes in the Chicagoland area are underwater —...
By Matthew Blake November 10, 2010 A proposal to set aside about $100 million annually in property tax money toward affordable housing has found a second life in the Chicago City Council and could go up for a...
In Chapter 13 bankruptcy, a person who is deeply in debt undergoes a financial reorganization by completing a three- to five-year repayment plan to his or her creditors. The debtor generally retains all of his or her property, but...
That’s the question that journalist and filmmaker Danny Schechter asks in his latest film, “Plunder: the Crime of our Time.” “Plunder” argues that the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity in the housing market, not...