Chicago leads U.S. in underwater homes

Crain's Chicago Business reports:

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 metro 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.

Nothaft attributed the slow pace of recovery here to job growth that's "not as robust" as in other cities and to a years-long struggle with a high number of foreclosures in the wake of the economic downturn of the mid-2000s.

Not everyone makes money in real estate......