Top 25 Illinois Cities With the Most Overleveraged Mortgages

In five Illinois cities, the average homeowner is carrying more mortgage debt than the value of his or her home, a new study finds.

In seven other Illinois cities, mortgage debt is within 10 points of home value on average.

WalletHub’s new analysis examined where homeowners take on properties they can’t really afford, and where buying a home ends up being smart financial decision. The study researched more than 2,500 American cities to figure out where people are the most and least overleveraged on their homes — and some Illinois cities made it to the very top of the least overleveraged list nationally.

To figure out how the cities ranked, WalletHub first divided the average mortgage debt by the median income, and then divided the average debt by the median home value in those cities. The analysts then gave each city points; the highest ratio received fifty points, while the lowest got zero. The overall ranking was determined by adding those two scores.

Here are the top 25 cities in Illinois with the most overleveraged mortgages.

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