Housing inventory is something we follow pretty closely, and realtor.com’s latest numbers suggest quite a bit about the current housing market. Oh housing inventory, how we love you. One of the major narratives of the housing recovery, it seems

Chicagoland’s foreclosure inventory continues to improve, according to the latest research by CoreLogic. Chicago: Chicagoland’s foreclosure marketplace continued on the path to recovery at the end of 2013, according to CoreLogic’s latest National Foreclosure Report. In Dec. 2013, 3.6

Last year closed out on a sour note for pending home sales, according to NAR’s final tally. Dec. 2013 was a rough month for pending home sales, with the Pending Home Sales Index dropping 8.7 percent from November to

The number of “flipped” homes in Illinois increased by 38 percent in 2013 compared to the previous year, and by a whopping 309 percent from 2011. A total of 5,388 homes were flipped in Illinois – homes purchased and

Even the most loyal Chicagoans might have considered fleeing the Windy City for good during the cruel polar vortex that recently froze Chicago. Like the winter, however, such thoughts don’t last forever. As the temperature warms to a balmy

Existing-home sales enjoyed a very healthy 2013, though it’s unlikely the market will repeat that performance in 2014. The housing market capped off a successful year in existing-home sales in December, with sales rising 1.0 percent from November to

The Census Bureau’s latest report on new home sales was a bit weak, but that does not mean that the sky is falling. We’ll get the bad news out of the way first: the sales of newly built single-family

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