Excerpt from a National Mortgage News Daily Briefing for October 14, 2003:

An online foreclosure property sale and advisory firm in Sacramento says that Chicago and Northern California continue to face a rising caseload of home loan defaults. In the case of metropolitan Chicago, alleged predatory lending seems to be one of the culprits, according to Fair Oaks, Calif.-based Foreclosures.com. The company says that there continues to be a steady increase in subprime credit quality home loans entering the foreclosure process, both in Chicago proper and in the city's suburbs. The pace of foreclosures in the Chicago area continues "at near epidemic levels," the company said in a recent report. Currently, there are 1,300 to 1,500 foreclosure cases pending in any given week in the 16-county, Chicagoland area.
Read on...

http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/wow/wow.pdf