Chicago Agent magazine’s REAL DATA is the residential reference book, an invaluable source of important stats about the Chicagoland real estate market that is provided every year for realty professionals. Our most recent book covered information from January 2011 to November

Chicago home prices fell by 1.5 percent from September to October in the latest Case-Shiller Home Price Indices from Standard & Poor’s. In addition, Chicago home prices were down 1.3 percent from October 2011; though a number of other

We all dream about appearing prominently in Google searches, about being present on that first page and generating thousands upon thousands of clicks for our site; the sad reality is, that’s probably never going to happen. Trust us, we’d love

Well, it’s Christmas Eve, the time of mistletoe and yuletide and egg nog. But while visions of sugarplums may be dancing in the heads of most people tonight, we’ll be going to sleep with another, equally potent question on

If your client is worried about delinquent tax bills, fear  not – there is now a database to look such things up. Buyers of residential and commercial properties in Cook County can now search an online database to find out

In an effort to shore up its struggling finances, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has announced that it will be tightening its mortgage standards and policies for certain homebuyers in 2013. The FHA’s finances have been called into question

Move over New York City! According to a new study by the folks at Realtor.com, Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood was the hottest neighborhood in America in 2012, with more users of the site searching for Old Town than any

As we highlighted in our first story on YouTube marketing, both YouTube and Internet video offer huge potential for real estate agents and the marketing of their businesses. Internet video traffic is estimated to make up 54 percent of

The multifamily housing market continued its dominant performance in the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Architecture Billings Index, a leading economic indicator of future construction activity that is based on the billings from the nation’s architectural firms. For November, the

There was nothing but good tidings and cheer in the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) existing-home sales report for November, which found existing-home sales to have increased 5.9 percent from October to November and 14.5 percent from November 2011.

“Optimism” hasn’t been associated with real estate much in the past few years. Russ Bergeron, CEO of Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), the Chicagoland’s multiple listing service, said, “I can’t remember feeling this positive about the prospects for a

Building permits increased 3.6 percent from October to November and 26.8 percent year-over-year in the latest joint study by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Altogether, between single-family and multifamily authorizations, building permits

The popular photo app Instagram has backtracked on Tuesday’s announcement of new policies that granted it carte blanche to sell users’ photographs without providing the user notification or payment for the use. The new policy sparked understandable fury from Instagram’s

Home sales in suburban Chicago increased by 35.6 percent year-over-year in November as the market continued to show signs of a recovery, according to the latest stats from the Mainstreet Organization of Realtors (MORe). Altogether, MORe’s data covered 200

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, the leading measure of builder confidence for the newly-built, single family home market, rose for the eighth consecutive month in December, hitting its highest mark since April 2006. Rising two

The goal for any real estate agent is to find a fresh, exciting marketing platform that can render their properties and business in a new, enticing manner to potential clients, and Internet video, YouTube specifically, is a fabulous way