Cook County Foreclosure Map for May 2026

In 2023, Gene Staples gambled on the future of Chicago’s office sector. Betting on its rebound from the post-pandemic slump, the local investor purchased the distressed International Tower—an 11-story building at 8550 West Bryn Mawr Road, next to O’Hare Airport.

That bet officially went up in smoke in May, when an affiliate of Staples’ company, IB Parks & Entertainment, defaulted on a $28 million mortgage originated by Bridge Investment Group in 2023.

It didn’t even help that the price paid by Staples for International Tower three years ago was far less than the building’s pre-pandemic value. Bridge Investment Group had provided a loan of $43.4 million to the previous owner, Chicago-based Golub, in 2019 and took control of the property in 2022. Golub purchased the property in 2014 for $40.3 million.

Overall, however, Chicago-area foreclosures dropped in May. Cook County recorded 753 foreclosure lawsuits started by lenders, falling from April’s total of 849, The Real Deal’s analysis of public records shows.

The total mortgaged value behind May’s foreclosure efforts totaled $189.3 million, a 15 percent slide from $222.3 million in the previous month, the analysis found.

Here’s where foreclosure court cases began in May:

Last month was also far calmer than April in terms of seven-figure loan defaults as the month saw only seven separate million-dollar filings — ten fewer than a month before. International Tower was the only filing above $4.75 million.

The median foreclosure value in May stood at $189,012. By comparison, these amounts for March and April were $180,335 and $191,900, respectively, TRD’s analysis shows.

The distress is consistently concentrated at the lower end of the market: 370 properties valued under $200,000, another 268 priced between $200,000 and $500,000, compared to only 33 properties in the $500,000 to $1 million range and six exceeding $1 million, TRD’s analysis of Cook County records shows.

Rocket Mortgage filed the most foreclosure complaints in May with 52, just one more than U.S. Bank.

Nationwide, foreclosure filings in May were up 14 percent from a year ago, according to real estate data firm Attom, based in Irvine, California.

The firm ranked Illinois fifth among U.S. states in the number of foreclosures that started in May. And Chicago topped the list of major metros, considered those with populations of 200,000 or more, in the number of properties repossessed through completed foreclosures in May.

In the first quarter of this year, Cook County had more properties with foreclosure filings than any other county in the country, clocking in at 3,439, Attom found.

April’s top foreclosure was on a $45.3 million loan issued by Wells Fargo in 2018 for affiliates of Versity Investment, the landlord of The Buckingham tower at 59 East Van Buren Street in Chicago’s Loop.