by Calculated Risk on 5/11/2009 09:12:00 PM

From Crain's Chicago Business: Foreclosure wave slams suburbia (ht Atrios)

Home foreclosures are surging in Chicago's suburbs just as they level off or decline in many city neighborhoods already ravaged by mortgage defaults.

Foreclosure cases filed in the first quarter jumped between 25% and 70% from the fourth quarter in DuPage, Will, McHenry, Lake and Kane counties, according to new data provided to Crain's by the Woodstock Institute, a Chicago-based housing advocacy group. Meanwhile, foreclosures fell 8% in Chicago, the first quarterly decline in a year.
...
The shifting locus of new foreclosures shows how the recession and job losses are supplanting subprime lending as the main driver of mortgage defaults ... While the first wave of foreclosures hit hardest in poorer city neighborhoods ... the latest round is striking middle-class areas where most borrowers qualified for standard-rate mortgages.

The decline in foreclosures in Chicago might be because of the recent moratorium, but clearly foreclosures are moving into the middle-class areas.

We're all subprime now!

And that gives me an excuse to post this ...

Click on drawing for larger image in new window.

My friend and co-blogger Tanta originated the phrase "We're all subprime now!" One of her many talents was something she called "Excel Art". This drawing is from December 2007 and is titled "The Adventures of Mortgage Pig, Chapter 4: Hanging Over the Cubicles of the Mod Squad".

The drawing is from an excel file that Tanta used to explain how Option ARM loans recast - see Tanta's UberNerd post: On Option ARMs