The US Treasury just announced a plan to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship – whatever that means. As explained in the Wall Street Journal the plan “provides as much as $200 billion of new capital plus new credit lines for the country’s main suppliers of funds for home loans … and puts… Read more
The Realtor associations have been harping on the message that real estate is local. This is their way to diffuse all the panic about home prices dropping by getting people to ignore the national pricing data. Of course, people will ultimately look at their local data and for most of the nation the answer won’t… Read more
This week’s Crain’s ran a story on the continuing demise of the downtown condo market. According to data from Appraisal Research Counselors sales of new downtown homes (i.e. condos) sank “73% to a record-low 685 units during the first six months of this year” compared with the first half of 2007. Here is the data:… Read more
Recently the Bureau of Labor Statistics released their June numbers. For the first time in a while employment levels in the Chicago metro area actually declined year over year – not by a huge amount but by 12,500. The unemployment rate surged to 7.1% from 6.3% the previous month but this was more a result… Read more
There are a number of statistics that are reported monthly that are of interest to potential and current homeowners. Everyone seems to want to know where the real estate market is going. Therefore, we have collected all the relevant Chicago area real estate market data in one place and will keep them updated monthly. We… Read more
