Here is another sign that the foreclosure crisis is not going away. Completed foreclosure auctions more than doubled in the Chicago six-county region from the first half of 2011 to the first half of 2012, according to data put together by Chicago's Woodstock Institute, a housing research and advocacy group. In the six-county region, foreclosures increased 104.7 percent from 8,515 auctions in the first six months of 2011 to 17,432 auctions in the first six months of 2012.

According to Spencer Cowan, vice president of research for Woodstock, a key reason is that the national foreclousre fraud or 'robo-signing' settlement in Febraury gave private lenders the green light to resume foreclosures. Cowan notes that completed foreclosure auctions are now at the level they were in 2010, before the robo-signing scandal broke.