After weeks of voting and thousands of votes cast, we announced the winners of the 2011 Agents’ Choice Awards last night at our sixth annual Agents’ Choice Awards Party at the Snaidero Kitchen and Design showroom at the Merchandise

According to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, construction spending rose for the second straight month, in increasing 0.2 percent from August to September to a seasonally adjusted rate of $787.2 billion. Though the spending was 1.3 percent

As legislators keep looking for ways to increase the efficacy of housing policy, some of the research will be shared at tomorrow’s How Housing Matters Conference in Washington,

The delinquency rates at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the GSEs that control more than half of the country’s mortgages, moved in opposite directions in September, with Fannie’s rate declining and Freddie’s increasing, according to a post by Calculated

Who knew home construction and sociology could go together so well? In a radical display of “survival of the fittest,” publicly-traded home builders have all but seized the Chicago home construction market, making wild gains while local, private builders

What is the typical rate of appreciation for home values? What does an appraisal do? What about an inspection? And is PMI always necessary? Those and other questions were featured on a recent survey by Zillow, the popular MLS

Though credit unions and small community banks had little to no impact on the global financial crisis of 2008, representatives from the two banking sectors stated before the House Financial Services Committee today say that a maze of new

Broad legislation stemming from 2010’s “robo signing” foreclosure scandal may lead to the first case of mortgage write-downs since the housing market declined in 2008. According to a report from Reuters, negotiations between state attorneys general, federal regulators and

The housing market is a grand, influential sector of the global economy, one that ebbs and flows with overall economic performance. But even though the message remains consistent – fix housing, fix the economy – very few of the

On Wednesday, October 26, the Realty Executives of Illinois in Westmont hosted a charity event called “BOO-ing for Wishes,” which benefited the Illinois Chapter of the Make A Wish

Redfin, the online real estate brokerage based in Seattle, has raised $14.8 million this venture round, led by new investor Globespan Capital Partners. That brings the virtual brokerage’s total financing to roughly $46

Kane County’s preliminary values for housing assessments this year warned officials that there may be a 20 percent decrease in the value of homes from last year. Coupled with an already tough budgeting season, the city of Elgin may

On November 7, architect Jeanne Gang’s new book, “Reverse Effect: Renewing Chicago’s Waterways,” will be released. The book, developed by Studio Gang Architects’ publications division and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is expected to aid in the transformation

A quick rundown of stats from our real estate news for the week of Oct. 24 – Oct. 28, by the numbers (with a Halloween

The latest Residential Price Index from FNC Inc., released October 20th, indicates that U.S. residential home prices declined in August by a seasonally adjusted rate of 0.8 percent, despite high level of sales during the

David Woolley, a California licensed land surveyor and certified fraud examiner, is leading a new study in tandem with the Harbinger Analytics Group Real Estate Fraud Experts on the recently disbanded company, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS).  The topic