Tag: Housing Bulletin

For a homeowner whose mortgage has become unaffordable because of a lost job, an interest-rate reset, or some other reason, the prospect of getting the loan’s terms modified sounds good—but the process can be confusing and dispiriting. That’s why a California company led by a veteran mortgage banker has devised... Read more

For people selling their homes in this withering sales climate, every little bit might help. One place sellers might not have thought to look for an edge is Google, where there’s also now a new tool for buyers.
On July 8, Google introduced a Google Maps addition that calls up listings for real estate at or near a mapped... Read more

Christian Chase knows foreclosures. He should—his past seven homes have all been foreclosures that he bought, cleaned up and (except for the one he lives in now) put back on the market.
“To me, it doesn’t make sense to buy something on the retail market when you can buy a [foreclosed home] so far under the market,” Chase says. And these days, deeply discounted distress-sale properties are virtually.. Read more

By now, it’s pretty well known that the foreclosure crisis is no longer limited to lower-income households. Large numbers of middle- and upper-income homeowners are falling into default, too. But a new report from the Woodstock Institute points out that, in many parts of the Chicago region, more affluent households are far less likely than lower-income homeowners to get specialized counseling about the foreclosure process—and that could potentially... Read more

Bill Rancic, the Chicagoan who first won Donald Trump’s TV reality show The Apprentice, has turned out to be the buyer of a foreclosed condo at the Park Tower that I wrote about here in early June. Rancic had also shown up in the July issue of Chicago after he and his wife sold a Gold Coast graystone for... Read more