The Chicago 77

Have you read the latest news that home sales are down? Pretty much everyday, right? According to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (PDF), released on Monday, Chicago experienced an 18.7% decline in home prices from April 2008 to April 2009, but did not experience a percentage change from the prior month, March 2009 […]

While attending the recent SPARKt conference I had the pleasure of listening to Adrian Holovaty, the founder of EveryBlock.com explain his unique service. If you haven’t heard of it, I suggest you head over their right away and sign up. It’s amazing. What is EveryBlock? EveryBlock.com is a service that goes out onto the web […]

24 June 2009 ? Today we have news on both extremes concerning Chicago’s real estate market. On the very bad side…yesterday The Sun Times, Chicagoist, and many others reported Chicago has 4 of the most dangerous neighborhoods (in Chicago’s case they are actually sections of well defined neighborhoods) in the country. They are: #2 State […]

Two reports yesterday seem to cast a shadow over recent good news in closings. Home Builders Not Predicting Increased Business The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported yesterday that it’s nation-wide monthly sentiment index dropped by a point to 15. This is down from a score of 18 one year ago and an all-time […]

On April 1 the Chicago Association of Realtors® (CAR) released some data that I thought was interesting in this time of dropping property values. However, I didn’t see these numbers discussed anywhere other than their web site. I think these numbers deserve a second look and hopefully some comments from our readers. The goal of […]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting two important conclusions based on data from the Office of Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision: Seriously Delinquent Subprime Loans Rise from 10.75% to 16.4% The report found that the number of seriously delinquent subprimes loans is on the rise. This means that more and […]

Housing starts went up in February. By now you have read in many, many, many places about how the Commerce Department announced this amazing fact yesterday (click here for the PDF). First of all, what is a “housing start?” The Commerce Department defines them as, “the number of single or multi-family dwellings that have begun […]

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index of prices in 20 U.S. cities dropped 18.5% in 2008, according to Standard & Poor?s, the New York-based ratings agency that compiles the index. Nationally, single-family home prices are at levels not seen since the third quarter of 2003 , says Crain’s Real Estate Daily.?There are very few, if any, pockets of turnaround […]