Photo: Rob Wile/Business Insider
Some believe the housing market is recovering.But we should really be talking about housing markets.
While some cities are booming, other cities are showing signs of weakening.
According to Case-Shiller, the city with the worst 2012 has been Chicago.
Yesterday we learned the city has now seen at least two consecutive monthly declines.
Chicago’s October foreclosure rate increased 3.6 per cent from September and 18.6 per cent from the same period one year ago, according to the Chicago Tribune’s Mary-Ellen Podmolik.
What’s going on here?
We took a tour of Ashburn, a working-class neighbourhood on the city’s southwest side, to get a ground-level view of what’s happening.
Ashburn boasts the city’s highest foreclosure rate — 1 in 137 units is seeing bank action, according to RealtyTrac.
That’s higher than parts of Southern California.
If you want to see the best case for why housing has not recovered, read on.
When you get to Ashburn you don't see a Sunbelt-style ghost town, but rather a lower-middle-class enclave trying to hold on.

But being for sale is different than being foreclosed on, and you can't always spot a latter example from the street. This was an exception.


Source: Homesteps

Source: Homepath
If it's possible, this is not as bad as it looks — Ashburn's crime rate is about average for the city. This is has as much to do with weather as crime.

The 8000 block of South Maplewood Ave had the most consecutive for-sale signs. Besides the one in the background, there's also one right behind where we took this photo.


Source: Redfin.com
That's evidently a flip price — you can see it's experienced an insane listing history since 2010, when it was sold for just $47.5K.

Source: Redfin.com

Source: Redfin.com
But one reason may be that the neighbourhood's residents are disproportionately employed in the public sector.


Source: Chicago Reader
It's easier to explain why Chicago at large is still so down. First: apartments similar to this one (in Ashburn) were converted into condos...


Source: Marketplace.org
...That can be prolonged if a home is damaged by Chicago's brutal winters (hence the windows on the earlier houses.)

Source: Marketplace.org

Source: Marketplace.org
So is there any hope for Ashburn? Some — here's the brand new, $81 million Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy. It welcomed its first class this fall.

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