Lake Forest Subdivisions (Burr Ridge, Oak Brook: bank owned, real estate, foreclosures)

[skontoller]

Hi,

I have been looking in the Lake Forest area and I was curious what people knew about Lake Forest just West of 41 around the Ridge/Old Mill Road intersection. Is the train track nearby active? I've seen a few bank owned/foreclosed properties in the area which makes me pretty wary. Any thoughts on the area?

Thx
SK

[chet everett]

While the facts do bear out that more established communities have a smaller percentage of distressed home owners, there are no umbrellas to give affluent areas protection from the fall out of the end of easy lending and overly exuberant real estate prices.

The history of the developments west of 41 in Lake Forest is kind of ammusing, as both the folks that thought it was better to allow reletavely routine suburban style developments and those that were pushing for larger estate style zoning have both been partially wrong and partially vindicated -- I do not recall seeing any of the older "horsey" properties being foreclosed, but there is also such a tiny market for those that property tax revenue and such is a non-issue.


There are "high end" developements through out the region, in every county, that have been effected by foreclosures. It would be hard to argue that an otherwise appealing development, with good access to school, good commuting options, and a pleasant mix of homes will suffer at all.

The challenge comes from folks that may have already been stretched pretty thin, living in a less desirable development / section of a development, that mainly had a "mailing address" to offer and little else. Historically when tough time hit these properties take the biggest brunt of price declines and generally remain in the doldrum long after the overall market picks up.

I have lived through this sort of problem in other developments, in towns like Oak Brook,Burr Ridge and other desirable addresses in the western suburbs. There is really no way to avoid it, and even when a developer and the town try to work together to use the hard to market parcels as a buffer zone with parks or similar "amenities" the overall timeline of how the total development "recovers" is really out side the control of anything but the overall demand that responds when the economy is again booming...