Current Market Conditions: It’s Wild and Weird On the Top

serious jumbo mortgage delinquencies are 50 percent higher than the overall market. The number of distressed sales in that category has tripled in the last year in the Chicago area; and that trend toward distress is probably true far and wide. It has to be given what we know of the mortgage-delinquency trend. Thirty percent of all foreclosures are top-tier properties and that is a doubling of the rate when compared to three years ago. Our current zeitgeist is a trade-down environment with low-ball appraisals. Government subsidies do not cover most mortgages in expensive-property markets. And values are projected to fall 60 percent for expensive properties from peak to broken-bubble bottom.