Down payments can make or break a housing contract, and recent data from LendingTree, which reports that the average down payment on homes is just 12 percent, would appear to be welcome news. After all, high down payments and

Everyone has a hypothesis on what specific factor is prohibiting housing from a true, sustainable recovery. Typically, such hypotheses feature a stock list of usual suspects – excess inventory, REOs and foreclosures, vacant properties, unreasonably tight financing and contract failures. An academic

Construction spending in November exceeded economists’ predictions and rose 1.2 percent from October to $807.1 billion, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce. All in all, construction spending was positive across the

Numerous disagreements swirled around Congress’ passing last month of the payroll tax cut extension, but none proved more controversial with real estate professionals than the agreed funding method for the tax cut – and now a date has been

After a strong summer, home values have been charting a rough course in recent months. Between CoreLogic’s HPI, LPS’ home price index and Radar Logic’s RPX, home values in the most recent data sets declined between 1 and 2

Starting January 9, Jon K. Broadbooks will begin his new position as communications director of the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR). “We are pleased to have an experienced and accomplished communications leader join the Illinois Association of Realtors staff

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has renewed a waiver for an anti-flipping regulation through 2012, according to a press release just issued by the agency. Originally passed to limit home flipping – the housing strategy of buying cheap properties

The National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index, a measure of housing contracts for pending sales, rose 7.3 percent in November to its highest level in 19 months, according to a new press release from the association.

We cover quite a few stories here at Chicago Agent, always with our finger on the pulse of what matters in real estate. Whether it’s a new study out by Federal Reserve analyzing the financial crisis, new statistics from the

Every year, Chicago Agent magazine publishes Real Data, a residential reference book that provides realty professionals with important stats about the previous year and helps with planning business for the current year. Our most recent book included information gathered

Our 2011 Offices to Watch issue invited brokerages all across Chicagoland to tell us why they’re an “office to watch.” We featured a roundup of several city and suburban offices and allowed the managing brokers, owners and directors to

Standard & Poor’s released the latest results of its influential Case-Shiller Home Price Indices just moments ago for the month of October, and like the previous collection of data, it shows both monthly and year-over-year declines for housing values

Who is making headway in the real estate industry in 2011? Who are the people whose names you should know, because they are making names for themselves this year? Earlier this year, we published our “Who’s Who” issue, which featured

Throughout the year, we published cover stories on a wide range of topics, but what issues proved most popular with our online audience? Was it our profile of spring’s new construction? Our field guide to fixing the industry? Or

Standard & Poor’s will release the latest batch of Case-Shiller Home Price Indices next Tuesday, and several of the other competing price indices have some analysts projecting the second negative month in a row for the Case-Shiller, which remains

It’s been quite a year in real estate, and as we approach 2012, we want to use our final week of production to commemorate some of the most popular content on our website in