The Chicago 77

Discount Brokers:  Do you get what you pay for? The answer, as with many things in life is, it depends. It is very easy for an agent at a full-priced broker to use the phrase, “You get what you pay for,” when attempting to downplay the credibility of a brokerage that offers rebates to buyers […]

For the greater good of those who frequent The Chicago 77, I’ve decided to open my playbook and share what I have learned through the numerous short sale and foreclosure (SS/F) experiences that I’ve had. Hopefully there are others out there with lessons that they are willing to share as well. In the end, what […]

Given that this is by many accounts “The Year of The Short Sale,” I plan to share my experiences with my peers and the public to shed some light on what Realtors go through when working with this type of transaction. As a listing agent I recently had a short sale accepted by the bank […]

I recently came across a client that I met through social networking. She told me about a property that she has that was on the market a few times over the past few years at $500k but never sold. I checked it out on the MLS and found that, in addition to a few basic […]

As an active agent I am in the field every day meeting clients, submitting contracts, showing my listings or viewing other agent’s listings. To me real estate is not just a job or a career, it’s a lifestyle. I’m “at work” from the moment I wake up until the time I go to sleep. One […]

There have been a lot of people speculating on what will happen to the market once the Fed stops buying mortgage backed securities and interest rates start to rise… It is logical for me to think that once the tax credit is over and the interest rates start to climb that buyer’s will be scared […]

The purpose of this article is to discuss the difference of obtaining a mortgage through either a bank or a mortgage broker/banker and the importance of shopping around. Many of my clients get into home buying in much the same way. Eager to get out looking at properties with no idea how much money they qualify to spend. As […]

In the first half of this article we ran through one possible short sale scenario. The goal was to establish a need for short sale regulation. The focus of this second part is to discuss the Treasury Departments imminent guidelines. On April 5th the Treasury Department’s new Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program (HAFA) will take […]

The question I come across regarding short sales involves an uncertainty of the length of time it will take to navigate this process successfully to the end. Unfortunately the answer can be equated to the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop.