The Chicago 77

So, you are facing foreclosure, and are worried and scared and don?t know what to do? Well, you are not alone. Millions of people nationwide have been foreclosed on or will be soon. There?s been all kinds of blame and finger-pointing (see my Who?s to Blame post for further info on that), but that’s not [...]

29 May 2009 ? Mortgage rates jumped about a full half point within one day. This is the biggest one-day jump I have ever seen-from 4.75-5.0% up to 5.25-5.5%-bad news for anybody sitting on the fence and not locking a rate, ?waiting for rates to go down even further.? The New York Fed bought up [...]

The Up We are seeing the continuation of a trend that seems hopeful. According the Illinois Association of Realtors® home sales in Chicago for April 2009 were up when compared to March 2009 by 16.7 percent. There were 1,378 home sold in April as compared to 1,181 in March. This seems to reflect the time [...]

At a dinner On May 21, the Chicago Association of Realtors presented the 2009 Good Neighbor Award winners. As I saw the recipients walk to the podium to receive their awards, the words of the evening?s emcee kept running through my head. In his remarks, Brian Bernardoni the Government Affairs Director for the Association said, [...]

27 May 2009 – Mortgage rates move up drastically Wednesday. This is the sharpest increase we?ve seen in a while. GM seems poised for filing for bankruptcy. The stock market has taken a sharp turn downward Wednesday, after stocks had rallied Tuesday.

26 May 2009 – Mortgage rates are holding steady today, after going up late last week. Tuesday morning the Nasdaq, Dow, and S&P are all up 2% or more. I would expect this to mean another jump up in mortgage rates, but what we expect and what actually happens these days aren?t always the same. [...]

22 May 2009 – Yesterday Great Britain got its AAA credit rating downgraded for the first time, sending investors on a selling spree. There is concern that the same thing might happen in US. Stocks, bonds, T-notes, the US dollar are all down, which is unusual to have everything drop at once. So, Thursday afternoon [...]

20 May 2009 Mortgage rates are up slightly Tuesday and Wednesday this week. The Dow is above 8400 for the first time in a while. Oil climbed to a 6-month high. Geithner says the US is starting to make headway against the crisis. I say that?s arguable, but I like to be optimistic.

Normally May is a great time to be a landlord in Chicago. This season, I wish I could say it is, but it isn?t. Apartment conditions in Chicago have softened because of the rising unemployment rate and overbuilding. The citywide condo boom has ended, and a lot of recently completed and under-way projects are now [...]

19 May 2009 – We are recommending that you cautiously float as mortgage interest rates test a definite strong level of support. Today, housing starts were reported significantly lower than expected, down 12.8% to 458,000 units from the expected level of 520,000! This is the lowest number of housing starts since January 1959, over 50 [...]

In today’s real estate market, everyone wants to know if we have hit the bottom of the declining market. The only way to really know the answer to that question is to see property values start to level off and even appreciate some. The national media would have you believing that property values in Chicago [...]

18 May 2009 – Mortgage rates are down again Monday morning, after the stock markets were slumping Friday. But Monday morning the stock markets are rallying, so I?d expect interest rates to likely be up a bit Tuesday. Rates are way down right now; some people are getting 5% or even less, so if you?ve [...]

Ok, so just about everybody has heard about loan modifications, or loan mods for short. They are also called loan workouts, loan restructuring, among others. I’m going to explain what types of loan mods exist, and who can or can’t likely get them. What kind of loan modifications are there? There are a few different [...]