Cook County Continues Sitting On $18M Pile Of Unclaimed Surplus Foreclosure Sale Cash Belonging To Ex-Homeowners With Few Takers To Be Found

In Chicago, Illinois, CBS2chicago reports:

• Nearly $18 million; it's money that belongs to thousands of Chicago-area families who've lost their homes through foreclosure. But CBS 2's Vince Gerasole reports, many of those families haven't seen a cent. One former owner of a condo in Wrigleyville is owed $3,485 after losing a unit to foreclosure. Another former condo owner is owed $45,423 for a unit in a condo tower along North Lake Shore Drive.

• "When you lose your property to foreclosure you think you lost everything," Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown said. But sometimes they haven't. If a bank sells a foreclosed property for more than it was owed, the surplus belongs to the original owner. Nearly $18 million from foreclosed properties in Cook County alone is sitting in a fund waiting to be disbursed. "We've collected almost $400,000 this year from surplus sales," Brown said.

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• With relatively few people coming forward, the clerk's office has debuted a website where foreclosed-upon families can begin to learn whether they are owed surplus mortgage funds. In spite of the effort and the high number of mortgage filings, only 37 individuals have gone through the process so far this year and the call continues to go out to distressed families who might have thousands of dollars coming their way. "We still have an average of almost 2,000 individuals on this list, so it's very difficult," Brown said. Individuals on the list are owed as little as 13 cents and others are owed as much as $460,000.

For the story, see Some Foreclosure Victims Due Thousands Of Dollars (Clerk's Office Holding Millions Owed To Former Homeowners).