November 2013 was a good month for home prices in Chicago, according to the latest Case-Shiller report Home prices in the Chicagoland housing market rose 11.0 percent year-over-year in Nov. 2013, the strongest yearly increase for the market since

We may complain about high housing costs in the U.S., but internationally speaking, we don’t have a leg to stand on. It’s a common complaint among consumers that their rent/mortgage payments are too high, but if they only knew

We’ve looked at how newly built homes are priced and how those prices have changed in recent years; now, we look at costs. The last couple weeks, we’ve looked at both how a single-family home is priced and how

This is the “Year of Originator Free Agency,” where because of the qualified mortgage rule, loan officers will be able to dictate terms and conditions to current potential employers, one recruiter states. On the other hand, there is a

The consensus at this year’s Asset Backed Securities (ABS) Vegas conference seemed to be that you can look for GSE reform in 2014 – but optimism won’t equal results, the panelists warn. Here are a few highlights of the

Foreclosure filings plummeted 26 percent from 2012 to 2013, with 1.4 million actions recorded last year – the lowest annual total since 2007. Default data firm RealtyTrac published those numbers Jan. 16 in its Foreclosure Market Report, noting that

Fran Broude, Coldwell Banker’s President and COO for Chicagoland and Milwaukee, has recently been named to Swanepoel’s list of “Most Powerful People in Residential Real Estate” in 2013. Broude ranked #82 out of 200 executives, and was also included on the

The year of 2013 was a promising one for new residential construction, though there remains considerable room for improvement. We’ll start with the good news: housing starts in the U.S. were up 18.3 percent year-over-year in 2013 and building

Steve Calk, chairman and CEO of The Federal Savings Bank (TFSB), announced that Regional Senior Vice President Frank Zak is leading the loan production office in Schaumburg, IL. Zak, who joined The Federal Savings Bank at the end of 2013, was hired

Homebuilder confidence declined a smidgen in January, though it remained in positive territory. Builder confidence for the newly built, single-family home market declined a single point from 57 to 56 in January, according to the latest Housing Market Index

The costs and prices of newly built single-family homes are hardly static, the data shows. Last week, we reported that a newly built single-family home in 2013 cost $399,532 to homebuyers, and we looked at the seven components of

We want to know what’s really going on in the real estate industry. What are the hot-button topics today? And, most importantly, what’s really true about agents? Make your voice heard by taking our Truth About Agents survey. Everyone

Housing inventory in Chicagoland continued it’s descent, according to the latest analysis. Though housing inventory remains low by historical standards, 2013 was the turning point, the year that inventory bottomed and housing marched forward into positive territory. At least,

Real estate agents may sell housing for a living, but how many of them are actually homeowners in their own right? Real estate agents argue on a daily basis for the merits of homeownership, but how many of those

We all know that home prices are on the rise, but what about property values and price per square foot? Earlier this week, we reported rather optimistically on home prices, and for good reason – according to the latest