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Tag: Housing Bulletin
Why Do You Keep Paying Your Mortgage?
By Dennis Rodkin
We’re five years out from the beginning of the housing market’s crash, and home values are lingering at about where they were in early 2002. Many forecasts predict the dark clouds will stay put, both because of the huge overhang of foreclosures and because the federal government has been slow to do anything effective about stopping the decline... Read more
Chicago’s Clogged Foreclosure Process—and a Cusack Sells in Lincoln Park
By Dennis Rodkin
In Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and Indianapolis, the rate of homes going into foreclosure is about the same. But according to a new study by analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, distressed homes here stay in foreclosure longer than they do in those other markets—which means they are likely to drag down our local housing market longer than the distressed homes in those other cities... Read more
Are We Still Looking for the Bottom?
By Dennis Rodkin
Last week, while I was on vacation, the release of the latest monthly Case-Shiller home price index brought a glimmer of good news: in July, for the third month in a row, local home prices were up. Could this be a sign that the Chicago real-estate market has finally bottomed out?... Read more
A Post-Peak Look at the Suburbs
By Dennis Rodkin
Last week, using data from our annual real-estate charts—the latest installment is featured in the October 2011 issue of Chicago, on newsstands now—I revealed which city neighborhoods have seen home values drop the most and the least since the peak of the real-estate market. This week, let’s look at the suburbs... Read more
A Post-Peak Look at the City
By Dennis Rodkin
The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index reported that home values in the Chicago region are down about 31 percent from their September 2006 peak. But what’s happened in your particular neighborhood or suburb?... Read more
Celebrating 20 Years of Deal Estate with a New Online Feature
By Dennis Rodkin
In September 1991, the renaissance in affluent city living hadn’t yet picked up the momentum it would have a decade later, when a boom in condo- and mansion-building transformed large swaths of Chicago. That’s why one developer made the strategic decision to cut up a pair of derelict Gold Coast mansions into four residences... Read more
Hinsdale Home of Former Blackhawk Brent Sopel Hits the Market
By Dennis Rodkin
Brent Sopel, a defenseman for the Blackhawks in their 2009–10 Stanley Cup championship season, is putting his Hinsdale home on the market today. In late July, after stints with the Atlanta Thrashers and the Montreal Canadiens, Sopel signed a two-year contract with Metallurg Novokuznetsk, a team in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League... Read more
How’s Mayor Emanuel Doing on Housing?
By Dennis Rodkin
This week’s flurry of analyses about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first 100 days in office culminates with a WBEZ taping tonight of a forum slated for broadcast Friday morning on the station’s Eight Forty-Eight program. Emanuel and top city officials will attend the taping, and I will be there to toss in a few ideas about the mayor’s efforts on housing. Time permitting—and there are a lot of other pressing topics to consider—here are the subjects I’d like to touch on... Read more
Dwellevate Helps Home Sellers Cut Costs, Market Home
By Dennis Rodkin
Back when house prices were rising steadily, sellers could usually expect to cover an agent’s commission with the profit made on the home’s sale. But in today’s down market, with homeowners often selling a house for less than what they paid for it, that commission often comes out of the seller’s own pocket... Read more