HispanicBusiness

Illinois continued to buck the national trend of falling foreclosure rates, as the state recorded a strong, double-digit, year-over-year increase in foreclosure activity last month.

However, in September, Illinois no longer had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, as it did in August. That distinction went to Florida, according to RealtyTrac.

Last month, 14,087 Illinois homes were the subject of a foreclosure filing, whether it was an initial notice of default, notice that a court-ordered sale of the property had been scheduled or whether the home had been repossessed by the lender, the firm said. Within Cook County, the state's most populated county, the 7,257 foreclosure filings recorded last month were a 20 percent decline from August but up 18 percent from September 2011.

Meanwhile, the average time to foreclosure remains high in some of the more populous states where the foreclosure process is handled by local court systems. In Illinois, it takes an average of 673 days to complete a foreclosure action.

In addition to Illinois and Florida, other judicial states that registered year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity were Ohio, New Jersey and New York.

Nationally, September's foreclosure activity dropped 7 percent from August and 16 percent from September, putting it at the lowest level since July 2007, the firm said.

Much of the national decrease was driven by improvement in large states like California, Texas, Arizona, Michigan and Georgia that do not rely on the courts to process foreclosure actions.