Tracking home foreclosures - Cook County

[Alexandra H.]

I'm going to start tracking foreclosures in the Cook County area. I was at Al's presentation and I thought it was a great idea. I have been in touch with the group in Madison (Kurt and Constance) who have started mapping foreclosures in their area on google maps. I live in the Albany Park area and have a suspicion that there are quite a few going on in my neighborhood alone. Is there anyone in the Chicago area that would be interested in working on this with me?

[Mike Tunney]

I was at the Chicago meeting that Al organized at DePaul. I'm just checking in to say I'm interested in helping out. I'm not up with some of the mapping/tech stuff Jeff was talking about, I'm just throwing my hat in the ring.

Email: [e-mail]

[Jeff Wegerson]

We're not going by my half-baked route currently. I think we going with Alexandra H's data source. See above where she said:

"
OK, this is the actual foreclosure listing: http://cook.il-foreclosure.com/ you can see in the column on the far left what the date of sale will be--I think this comes out every week day and can be combined with the attachment I sent from Friday. This afternoon I will put all the single family homes on the map from Chicago."

My bolding. So stay tuned.

[Alexandra H.]

Mike Tunney said:

I was at the Chicago meeting that Al organized at DePaul. I'm just checking in to say I'm interested in helping out. I'm not up with some of the mapping/tech stuff Jeff was talking about, I'm just throwing my hat in the ring.

Email: [e-mail]

Hi Mike
Thanks for throwing your hat into the ring. Hopefully I will find out tomorrow where we can get a current list of foreclosures - not just foreclosure sales. After I figure that out I'm thinking maybe we can all meet and just figure out how to coordinate this and keep on top of it. Thanks - Alex

[Alexandra H.]

I have not been able to figure out where to get just the foreclosures without going on one of these websites where you pay...I just checked the listing for foreclosure sales for today and tomorrow and they are huge! I'm thinking maybe we can meet and talk about how to track all of this? I live part-time in Mexico City so will be leaving soon and it would be great if there could be continuity for this.
What are peoples schedules?
Maybe meet this Sunday?
Alex

[Alexandra H.]

I finally talked to my real estate tax guy and found out where they publish the foreclosures: the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. This is a daily paper lawyers get. I checked on-line and it's very expensive. I wrote to a lawyer friend to see if he gets it. Anyone else have a lawyer friend that might give us the daily foreclosure section?

[Jeff Wegerson]

Alexandra H. said:

I finally talked to my real estate tax guy and found out where they publish the foreclosures: the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. This is a daily paper lawyers get. I checked on-line and it's very expensive. I wrote to a lawyer friend to see if he gets it. Anyone else have a lawyer friend that might give us the daily foreclosure section?

$159 for a six month subscription is within reach of a few of us chipping in small amounts and then asking PSB to say match what we chip in. If we have a solid plan of action we could use the 15 day free trial to test out our ideas before looking for donations. Of course a friendly lawyer would give us more latitude to plan. I will be seeing a lawyer friend on the 20th, although that's a bit away. I don't have enough of a relationship to ask sooner.

[Mike Tunney]

I'm currently a law student at DePaul. I'm going to check and see if our library gets that publication. I'll let you guys know by the end of the weekend.

Jeff Wegerson said:

Alexandra H. said:

I finally talked to my real estate tax guy and found out where they publish the foreclosures: the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. This is a daily paper lawyers get. I checked on-line and it's very expensive. I wrote to a lawyer friend to see if he gets it. Anyone else have a lawyer friend that might give us the daily foreclosure section?

$159 for a six month subscription is within reach of a few of us chipping in small amounts and then asking PSB to say match what we chip in. If we have a solid plan of action we could use the 15 day free trial to test out our ideas before looking for donations. Of course a friendly lawyer would give us more latitude to plan. I will be seeing a lawyer friend on the 20th, although that's a bit away. I don't have enough of a relationship to ask sooner.

[Alexandra H.]

I was talking to another law student at Depaul the other day and she was accessing the Law Bulletin on-line but apparently the foreclosure notices are only accessible in the hard copy paper. Mike, it would be great if you could see if they have it at Depaul. I'm going to call the regional public library on Lincoln to see if they have it there. I've been adding a lot more of the foreclosure sales to the map and you can really see where they are clustered. I'm thinking about taking a drive and shooting some photos of some of the foreclosed properties and checking out the neighborhoods towards the end of the week or next weekend.

[Alexandra H.]

I just checked and the Sulzer Regional Library has the last months copies of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. I'm going to go over there in the next couple days and take a look and make some copies. Here is an editorial from the NYTimes today on foreclosures: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09tue1.html?_r=1

[Mike Tunney]

Sorry I didn't post sooner, but I'm in the middle of finals week at school. Our library does have some hard copies of the Chicago Daily Law Bulleting. Once finals are done with I'll get some copies together and see what we can do. It'll probably be sometime next week. But I have looked at the hard copy and they do have notices from what I saw. Let me know how you'd like me to get you this info or post it on the map.

Mike

Alexandra H. said:

I was talking to another law student at Depaul the other day and she was accessing the Law Bulletin on-line but apparently the foreclosure notices are only accessible in the hard copy paper. Mike, it would be great if you could see if they have it at Depaul. I'm going to call the regional public library on Lincoln to see if they have it there. I've been adding a lot more of the foreclosure sales to the map and you can really see where they are clustered. I'm thinking about taking a drive and shooting some photos of some of the foreclosed properties and checking out the neighborhoods towards the end of the week or next weekend.

[Alexandra H.]

Mike Tunney said:

Sorry I didn't post sooner, but I'm in the middle of finals week at school. Our library does have some hard copies of the Chicago Daily Law Bulleting. Once finals are done with I'll get some copies together and see what we can do. It'll probably be sometime next week. But I have looked at the hard copy and they do have notices from what I saw. Let me know how you'd like me to get you this info or post it on the map.
Hi Mike

I'm leaving the country on the 22nd and won't be back for at least a couple months. I'm hoping that maybe you or this other guy, Jason Young who I have been in contact with can work on the mapping while I'm gone. I can show you how to do it - it's very easy. Can we meet sometime next week and I can also give you Jason's email - he will be in Chicago the first week of January and said he could help out. Let me know what day would work for you. Thanks

Mike

Alexandra H. said:

I was talking to another law student at Depaul the other day and she was accessing the Law Bulletin on-line but apparently the foreclosure notices are only accessible in the hard copy paper. Mike, it would be great if you could see if they have it at Depaul. I'm going to call the regional public library on Lincoln to see if they have it there. I've been adding a lot more of the foreclosure sales to the map and you can really see where they are clustered. I'm thinking about taking a drive and shooting some photos of some of the foreclosed properties and checking out the neighborhoods towards the end of the week or next weekend.

[Jeff Wegerson]

The city clerk has a photo of every chicago house available online. Or maybe assessor or some other office. Google has photos of many of the houses but the addresses don't match up correctly. Here's my house. It's the assessor. Here -> http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/info/startres.asp
Do an address search then click on the camera icon on the right.