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Rates Fall Again! Now is a great time to buy a home! According to Bloomberg - Oct. 8th: Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed U.S. home loans fell for the second consecutive week, pushing borrowing costs to near record lows. The average U.S. 30-year rate dropped to 4.87 percent from 4.94 percent last week. The 15-year rate was 4.33 percent, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac of McLean, Virginia, said today in a statement. Falling rates helped boost home-loan applications last week to the highest level sin... Read Full Post

September 14, 2009 Here is a press release from Mainstreet Organization of Realtors. Things are getting stronger in the housing market. August Marks Third Straight Month of Year-to-Year Increases DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. - Sales of single-family detached homes went up 8.6 percent in August compared with the same period a year ago, according to statistics released today by the Mainstreet Organization of REALTORS® (MORe), indicating the third consecutive monthly increase. MORe measured activity on ... Read Full Post

We are celebrating 20 years selling real estate in Chicago's western suburbs. Although this market is certainly more challenging than in the past; we still have the same purpose and direction when selling homes as we have had in better markets. Our purpose is to find houses that our clients can call their homes. We arent about how many houses we sell but how many 'right houses ' we can find for our clients. They have to walk in and know they will be happy in a home they choose. It has to be c... Read Full Post

The media has brought us down to their level of thinking that this market is in the tank. Yes, we all know it is slower but we need to have the facts. We must look at the stats as it may not be as bad as the media makes it out to be. This point was made clear to me as my seller and I looked at the recent sales stats for homes between 1 million and two million so we could come back with a reasonable counter during negotiation. After searching out listings that sold in the last 90 days, our res... Read Full Post

It seems like we are in a much slower market than we have experienced in quite a long time. We as real estate agents can catch a complacent attitude since the market is not moving as fast as it has been in recent years. We have to warn our buyers against having this attitude and thinking that homes wil alwaysl be there in terms 'of their very slow decision making' time frame. A couple that I have been showing homes to for quite some time was in for a surprise when the home they put an offer o... Read Full Post

Mistakes that shouldn't be made if you want a quicker than average sale in this slower than average market... Not having home in tip-top mechanical shape. A professional inspector often finds something out of order and can make the buyer uneasy causing the deal to go sour. Too much landscaping to the point that it dwarfs the home. The first impression a buyer has is so important as they wait to enter the home. Too much clutter in the basement. Too much clutter keeps buyers from seeing storage... Read Full Post