National News
Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index for the 20-City Composite fell 1.1 percent from November to December, capping off a 3.8 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2011 and 4.0 percent year-over-year decline that pushed the rate
Bank of America’s long-running relationship with Fannie Mae ended late last week, when the bank announced that it would no longer sell new mortgages to the GSE. According to a New York Times overview of the split, tensions were running
The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a monthly measure of pending home sales activity from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), posted both monthly and yearly increases for January, evidence of continued gains in housing for the next two
For nearly four years now, the narrative in housing has been essentially unchanged – as soon as inventories go down, and the vast number of vacant, excess homes are cleared from the market, prices will increase and a housing
Do real estate’s top 1 percent of agents sell faster? LeapRE researched which agents had the highest amount of list-side transaction volume during 2011. The top 1 percent of agents listed 27.7 percent of all listings closed in 2011.
The housing market is expected to make a positive contribution to gross domestic product for the first time in seven years in 2012, albeit a very modest one, according to Fannie Mae. The government-sponsored enterprise reported gross domestic product
By Stephanie Becerra Real estate photography has flourished into a powerful and lucrative industry despite the economic state, because selling houses is no different than selling products. Today, Realtors are highly cognizant that high-quality images not only sell homes,
Q: What should I be educating my condo sellers about as it pertains to a potential buyer qualifying for financing? A: One misconception that both condo sellers and buyers have is that they believe the buyer’s credit approval – the
How did existing-home sales look in January? Is Quicken Loans preparing to take the stand in the nation’s highest court? And could Illinois become even more smoke free? We look at the week’s top news (Feb. 20 – Feb.
A new Center for Housing Policy study on housing affordability puts an interesting twist on the endlessly contentious debate of renting and homeownership, looking at the topic not from the perspective of one versus the other, but with the reality
January was a month of contradictory results for single-family home sales, as the U.S. Census Bureau reports that though sales of the properties decreased by 0.9 percent from December, they increased by 3.5 percent from January
The news cycles have been awash in reports the last six months on the growing demand for rental properties in the U.S., but too often, renting’s success has been presented as housing’s loss, a creation of the post-2008 market
Baird and Warner have announced that they have added two senior sales management professionals to their roster of brokers. Penny Sirott, formerly of Coldwell Banker, and Richard Murawski, from Koeing & Strey, specialize in real estate in the Chicagoland
Acting Federal Housing Administration Commissioner Carol Galante hinted at further changes in the FHA’s mortgage premium system on Wednesday, referencing revenue models that would complement the recently passed premium hikes for the agency’s
The Architecture Billings Index (ABI), one of the leading economic indicators of future construction activity, reported positive numbers yet again in January, marking the third straight month that the index has been in such territory, according to the most recent press release from
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Acting Director Edward DeMarco offered a long-awaited vision for the U.S. mortgage market, sending Congress a new plan detailing a secondary mortgage market without the presence of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. In his