March was another solid month of price increases in the for-sale and rental markets, both locally and nationally. Chicago’s asking-price fortunes continued in March, according to the latest Price Monitor from Trulia, with asking prices in the area’s housing

Affordability is often crunched into a single number, but how does it differ across the spectrum of salaries? Chicago’s housing market may be relatively affordable, but it only goes so far for someone earning a median salary. That was

Mortgage standards have been pretty tight since 2008, but new readings from the MBA show them to improving. On the surface, it looks pretty underwhelming. From February to March, the Mortgage Banker Association’s Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) increased

There are many uncertainties in the world, but here’s one thing we know for sure – progress has been made on the foreclosure front. Foreclosure inventory in the Chicagoland housing market plummeted 41 percent year-over-year in February, according to the

Our local market has made quite a bit of progress since 2011, but it still hasn’t reached the promised land. Housing bubble talk has grown strangely common the last few months, what with home prices nationally posting double-digit increases

The various generations differ in many ways, especially when it comes to the types of homes they ultimately buy. The last couple weeks, we’ve been combing through NAR’s latest Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report, and have reported

In the last four years, the U.S. apartment vacancy rate has been cut in half; what’s happened at the local level? Reis, Inc. released its latest report on the nation’s rental markets yesterday, and it featured a stunning statistic:

What new home features are consumers desiring the most in 2014? And which ones do they consider essential? We all know how many variables go into a new home, and we all know that every consumer is unique in

Home prices continued their ascent in February, according to the latest index from CoreLogic. Home prices in the Chicagoland area increased 11.8 percent year-over-year in February, according to the latest Home Price Index from CoreLogic. Though encouraging, that yearly

It’s taken some time, but it appears that we’re finally making headway through the nation’s nasty mortgage markets. Delinquent mortgages and foreclosures were undoubtedly the most public face of the housing crisis, but new research suggests that significant progress

$1 million is a great deal of money…or is it? How much does $1 million really buy you in today’s real estate markets? How much housing does $1 million really buy you? That was the question behind a recent

Housing inventory has been a most blue of topics for our local market, but have things finally turned around? We keep hearing reports that the nation’s housing inventory has turned the corner, but how true is that in our

We keep hearing about the nation’s residential construction market, but what about our local market? The nation’s residential construction market has been receiving (justly, we should add) quite a bit of attention from analysts and housing professionals alike, and

Where was the real estate action taking place in Chicagoland’s suburbs in February? We all saw the headlines, and they weren’t pretty: with the winter weather in full force, home sales in the Chicagoland region were down 8.2 percent

Economic inequality is surging just about everywhere; how could that impact the local housing market? Income inequality has become a major news item in recent months, and for good reason – by almost every economic measure, inequality has increased

Many factors influence homebuyer preferences when looking at newly built homes, including their ethnicity. When looking at preferences among the buyers of newly built single-family homes, how do those preferences differ when looking at the buyers’ ethnicity? According to