The Chicago 77

Uncle Sam is offering to let you keep some of your money through tax credits for green upgrades to your home. This is somewhat old news?green tax credits have been around since 2006?but the tax credits have recently been expanded.

The Illinois Association of Realtors® (IAR) announced yesterday that both home prices and home sales were down in Chicago when comparing December 2008 to December 2007. They are also down when comparing all of 2008 to 2007. Chicago Home Sales Figures In December a total of 1,215 homes were sold in Chicago. This is down [...]

We probably should have seen this coming, with reports from agents saying they were seeing an unusual increase in buyers wanting to do something. Today The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) released a report stating the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales of existing homes in December went up to 4.47 million units in December. [...]

The state of the current real estate market has made short sales more prevalent than ever before. When I started selling real estate five years ago, I rarely encountered a short sale. This past Sunday while out with buyers, two of the seven homes we previewed were short sales. Having just finalized a short sale [...]

Numbers can be spun in any way that works for you. The foreclosure numbers that Cook County Circuit Court released on Jan. 13, 2009 are a case in point. Dorothy Brown, Cook County Clerk, chose this headline, “Cook County Mortgage Foreclosures Spike to 338%: A Ten-Year High.” And, of course, that is correct. In 1999 [...]

So, how do you Ms/Mr Agent know how much to recommend lowering the price? How do you, Ms/Mr Seller know if the reduction is warranted? How do you know it’s the right amount of reduction? Do you guess? Do you feel your way along? Instinct is important to an agent, but the appraiser side of me also forces me to present [...]

Chicago, the city that gave the country its first African American president, has been crowned the most segregated city in the United States. On Dec. 26th, 2008, using data from The Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University, The Chicago Tribune wrote an in-depth report on segregation in Chicago. The report appears to have [...]

Many real estate agents who entered the industry within the last eight years have seen a serious downturn in their business, especially if they were on the scene during the boom years between 2003 and 2005. Back in the good ole days, all an agent had to do was to put out a for sale [...]

All of us here at The Chicago 77, and perhaps all of us who live in the Chicago 77, would like to wish President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, good luck with the heavy load he is about to bear.

Looking to do some improvements on a home you want to purchase, but you don?t have the money to do it or the bank won?t lend on the property because the collateral isn?t in acceptable condition? The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) 203(k) loan may be your answer. What Is a FHA 203(k) The FHA 203(k) [...]

This year is a whole new ball of wax. Buyers are thinking short sales, foreclosures, and taking advantage of buyers who have to sell. They are thinking depreciation and buying at prices prior to the “boom.”

If you’re new to Chicago, you have probably been scratching your head a lot lately. You were driving down the street and you saw a lawn chair in a semi-shoveled-out parking space. Do you move the chair? What’s going on? Welcome to Chicago, the city where if you shovel out a public parking space, you [...]

I was looking through CNN Money the other day and found an article about houses for sale for less than $1,000. They called them Radical Cheap homes. The article mentioned that there were 18 listings in Flint, MI that were under $3,000, 22 in Indianapolis, 46 in Cleveland and the eye-popping number of 709 in [...]