Today's News Headlines

By Kerri Panchuk • May 22, 2012 • 8:37am Illinois home sales in April increased 15.7% from year-ago levels while median prices held steady for the second month in a row, the Illinois Association of Realtors said Tuesday. Illinois home sales in April hit 9,961 completed closings, up 15.7% from 8,606 a year earlier, making it the state's best sales performance in two years. The median price

Home sales in the Chicago area jumped 19.3 percent in April from a year earlier, while prices appeared to be stabilizing, dipping only 1.5 percent, according to a report that showed prices in the city of Chicago rose more than 9 percent. Ads by Google What's My House Worth?Find your home's current market value online with HouseValues.com. www.HouseValues.com The report from the Illinois Ass

By Mary Ellen Podmolik Tribune staff reporter 9:29 a.m. CDT, May 22, 2012 April sales of existing homes and condominiums in the Chicago area rose dramatically from their year-ago pace, and home prices showed some stability last month as well. In the nine-county Chicago area, sales last month rose 19.3 percent from a year ago, to 6,814 homes sold and the median price of $160,000 was down 1

BELLEVILLE — An Illinois prosecutor is suing 22 local and national banks and mortgage companies, accusing them of deceit and fraud in using an electronic mortgage registry to sidestep recording fees his county should have been collecting. St. Clair County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly contends the lenders engaged in fraud and deception by failing to file documents with the county&#3

BLOOMINGTON – A special Illinois Supreme Court committee is looking for public input on proposed ways to improve how lower courts handle foreclosures, just as McLean County gets its new mediation program under way. One of the high court panel’s subcommittees has drafted 14 proposed recommendations for foreclosure mediation and mandatory preforeclosure loss mitigation. Ideas include providing hou

By Megan Oster In real estate, the modern definition of customer service means getting in the trenches with clients. Think you provide your clients with superb customer service? Dale Taylor, a broker with RE/MAX All Properties in New Lenox, literally cleaned up feces for a client. The tenant to whom the client had been renting had, without the client’s knowledge, been breeding dogs in the base

By Peter Ricci Builder confidence is one of the main areas of focus for real estate, and it will be particularly interesting how builders in Illinois react to a series of environmentally-conscious regulations currently working their way through the state government. Sometime soon, the Illinois House is expected to approve the state’s adoption of the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code,

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) ? The economy remains strong in rural areas of 10 Midwest and Western states because of the health of agricultural businesses there, according to a new survey of banks serving rural areas. The overall economic index included in the monthly Rural Mainstreet survey rose to 58.5 in May from April's already healthy 57.1. Any score above 50 on the index, which ranges from 1 to 100,

WASHINGTON, D.C.— A sea of blue lapped against the foot of the Washington Monument Thursday as more than 10,000 blue-shirted Realtors from across the country descended on the nation's capital to pressure Congress to keep housing at the top of legislators' priorities in coming months. According to organizers, the rally—sponsored by the National Association of Realtors and complete with a jumbo

$0", "r+m+g-")% --> By Ken Harney WASHINGTON ? Thousands of condo unit owners and buyers around the country could soon be in line for some welcome news on mortgage financing: Though officials are mum on specifics, the Federal Housing Administration is readying changes to its controversial condominium rules that have rendered large numbers of units ineligible for low down-payment insured

Mi casa es su casa. At least that's what HomeExchange.com is offering travelers with their vacation home trading program. For a minimum of $9.95 per month, travelers can pay for an unlimited amount of trades to live in your home while they live in yours. According to the FAQs, it's up to the travelers to decide whether they want to trade cars and take care of pets if that's part of the deal. Con

Thinking about fudging on your application for a mortgage? Maybe inflating your income a tad? Checking the box to indicate you're going to live there when you're really not? Exaggerating your job description? Don't. Not long ago, people could get away with little white lies like these to obtain financing. But not anymore.

Foreclosure starts in Illinois are on par with those in other areas, but the state's court-supervised foreclosure system continues to bog down properties in the process. Almost 7.5 percent of mortgage loans on one- to four-unit residential properties in Illinois were in foreclosure at the end of March, compared with a national average of 4.39 percent, according to data released Wednesday by the M

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Maybe the U.S. economy's strength this winter wasn't just weather-related after all. Home construction is near a three-year high. And factory output has risen in three of the year's first four months. The data released Wednesday suggest growth in the April-June quarter is off to a good start, helped by falling gas prices and solid hiring gains. Fears of a spring slump are e

CHICAGO (CBS) — With just four days to go before the NATO Summit, protesters have already been making their presence known for three days. As CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli reports, activists with Occupy Chicago and Communities United against Foreclosures and Evictions gathered in front of the Citibank branch at LaSalle and Madison streets Wednesday morning, in a call for a moratorium on foreclos

U.S. builders began work on more homes last month, evidence that the battered housing market is slowly healing. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders broke ground at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes in April from March. That's 2.6 percent more than March's total, which was revised higher. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.

Bank of America Corp. said on Tuesday it had launched a nationwide program that offers increased relocation payments to delinquent mortgage customers who complete qualifying short sales. The second-largest U.S. bank said the program, tested in Florida last year, offers payments of $2,500 to $30,000 to help homeowners move out of their homes. A short sale is when a lender allows a homeowner to sel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Jennifer Anderson's family could no longer afford their mortgage and lost their home, she expected many years to pass before they would again become property owners. But less than two years later, in March, they purchased a $297,000 house outside Phoenix, Arizona, after qualifying for a loan backed by the U.S. government.

(Crain's) — Downtown apartment rents hit another high in the first quarter, and more hikes may be in the offing amid a red-hot rental market. The average effective rent at top-tier, or Class A, downtown apartment buildings rose to $2.50 a square foot in the quarter, up 2.9 percent from the fourth quarter and 9.2 percent from a year earlier, according to Appraisal Research Counselors, a C

Housing affordability is at a 40-year high, according to new data from Fiserv. Housing affordability has been trending upwards in the post-boom housing market, and according to analytics firm Fiserv, it’s now at a 40-year high. Utilizing data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fiserv studied 380 U.S. markets, and it found that with how home prices have corrected after their peak le