Worried About Losing Your Home? Call Your Lender!
August 2nd, 2010 categories: Chicago Real Estate News
I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating: If you’re worried about falling behind on your mortgage payments or losing your home to foreclosure, you need to immediately call your mortgage lender or bank.
I know that this can be intimidating. It can be embarrassing, too. But if you ignore your mortgage problems, you’ll just increase the odds that you will lose your home to foreclosure.
And here’s the thing: Mortgage lenders don’t want to evict you from your home. They don’t want to take over your house. And they most certainly do not want to try to sell your house in today’s still-struggling economy for pennies on the dollar.
In fact, mortgage lenders across Chicago are taking steps to keep people from losing their homes. As an example, just look at large national lender JPMorgan Chase. The company recently opened its third Home Ownership Center in Chicago, this one located at 5813 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Homeowners can visit this center, or any of the other two that Chase operates in Chicago, to meet face-to-face with lenders to help forge compromise solutions that will help them avoid foreclosure. The Home Ownership Centers are open to homeowners who have mortgage loans owned or serviced by Chase, Washington Mutual or EMC.
And this is just one example. Lenders have economic incentives to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. The federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program offers financial bonuses to mortgage lenders who agree to modify the home loans of struggling homeowners.
Lenders can do this in one of several ways. They can lower the interest rates that homeowners are paying, forgive a portion of their principal balance or restructure the terms of their loans. All of these options can reduce the monthly payment that struggling homeowners have to pay.
Of course, homeowners can’t explore any of these options if they don’t first call their mortgage lenders. If you find yourself struggling to make your mortgage payments each month, make sure to call your lender. It’s the surest way to find financial relief.
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Good News, Bad News From Housing Stats
July 30th, 2010 categories: Chicago Real Estate News
When the Illinois Association of REALTORS® releases its monthly housing statistics these days you can count on a mix of good and bad news. It’s just that kind of economy.
That’s exactly what we got in late July when the association released its numbers for June. Depending on how you looked at them, the June sales numbers for Chicago were either good or bad news.
First, the good: June total home sales, which include single-family and condominium sales, rose 27.5 percent in Chicago when compared to the same month one year earlier. There were 2,526 home sales in the city of Chicago in June this year compared to 1,981 home sales in the same month in 2009.
Now for the bad news, at least for sellers: The city of Chicago’s median sales price in June fell to $234,250. That’s down 3.2 percent from June of last year, when the median price stood at $242,050.
These remain tough times for sellers who bought their homes during the peak years of the housing boom. If these sellers have to move their homes today, if they have no other choice but to sell, the odds are good that they’ll have to take a loss on the sale. Housing prices have just fallen too far from the peak pricing days of 2005 and 2006.
If you’re one of these owners who has no choice but to sell, make sure to work with a skilled REALTOR®. A REALTOR® can help you price your condominium or single-family home properly. If you price your home too high for your market, you’ll scare away potential buyers and your property will sit on the market forever (until you adjust the price to be more reflective of reality).
It’s never been easy to sell a home. Today, though, is one of the most challenging selling markets I’ve ever seen. Sellers who don’t price their homes properly will struggle when it comes to landing solid offers.
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Chicago foreclosure news remains troubling
July 28th, 2010 categories: Chicago Real Estate News
There are two things that our economy needs to gain momentum: We need unemployment to fall and housing foreclosures to drop.
The latest economic numbers brought mixed news on these two key factors.
In good news, the unemployment rate for Illinois fell to 10.4 percent in June. That’s down .4 percent from May. That may seem like a tiny drop, but June’s dip marks the third straight month in which Illinois’ unemployment rate fell.
The news is more mixed concerning Chicago’s foreclosure rate.
According to the latest numbers from online foreclosure company RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings in the Chicago area jumped 30.4 percent in June when compared to the same month one year earlier. However, foreclosures did fall 4.28 percent when compared to May of this year.
According to a Chicago Sun-Times story on the numbers, RealtyTrac is reporting that there is now a “fragile stability” in housing markets across the country.
The Sun-Times verifies this by pointing out that June’s year-over-year increase of 30.4 percent is an improvement when compared to the year-over-year increase of June, 2009. Back then, housing foreclosures had jumped 38 percent.
What is sobering, though, is that more than 1 million U.S. households are expected to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, according to the RealtyTrac data. This is worse than last year, when banks and lenders repossessed more than 900,000 homes.
To get a sense of how bad of a year 2009 was for homeowners, consider this historical fact: Lenders in a typical year repossess about 100,000 homes across the United States.
Fortunately, the rate of foreclosure filings is dropping. In 2009, lenders filed a record-setting 2.8 million foreclosure filings in the United States. We won’t break or equal that record this year.
That’s the good news. But the unfortunate truth is that the United States is in line to see too many housing foreclosures once again in 2010. Until that changes, don’t expect our nation’s economic recovery to actually feel like one.
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Singles Find Chicago Market A Welcoming One
July 26th, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, Chicago Real Estate News
The housing market may be a challenging one for sellers, but it’s not bad at all for buyers. And for single buyers in the Chicago area, today’s market is ideal.
The Daily Herald recently ran a story about the growing number of single buyers purchasing condominiums and single-family homes in the Chicago region.
This is a big change. It used to be that single men and women rented apartments. Today, though, a growing number of them are skipping the rental period altogether.
The reasons are many. For one thing, the median sales price of condominiums and single-family homes in Chicago and its suburbs has dropped during the housing slump. Chicago housing is more affordable today than it’s been in years. Single buyers can purchase more home for their dollars today.
Then there are the record-low mortgage interest rates. The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loan was still well under 5 percent as of the middle of July. That’s a terrific rate. For single buyers, it means they’ll pay less each month on their mortgage payments.
The Herald story also points out that the now-expired first-time homebuyer tax credit from the federal government, which provided a tax credit of up to $8,000 to buyers who were purchasing their first homes, encouraged a larger number of single buyers to enter the housing market.
There are other benefits to single buyers today, too. Sellers in Chicago and its surrounding areas are often desperate to move their homes. They’re often willing to lower their asking prices and make more concessions to buyers, all to help sell their homes in less time. There’s also a large inventory of condos and single-family homes on the market today. Simply put, buyers have plenty of choices when looking for a Chicago home today.
Personally, I think it’s a great idea for singles to purchase their own homes as soon as possible. Residential real estate in the Chicago area has traditionally retained its value. Though there are never any guarantees, single buyers who purchase today at what might be near the bottom of the local housing market will be well positioned to see their home purchase increase in value before they sell.
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Homes Still Getting Bigger, Survey Says
July 19th, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News
Yes, we’re still dealing with the aftereffects of the Great Recession. And, yes, housing prices, in Chicago and across the nation have fallen. A growing number of homeowners are underwater on their mortgage loans, owing more on them than what their residences are worth.
But even with all this we have it good, both in the United States and in Chicago.
At least that’s what the 2009 American Housing Survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says. The Chicago Sun-Times recently ran a story highlighting the results of this survey. According to the survey, U.S. homes are getting larger, and the vast majority of them have the modern conveniences that we now take for granted.
The Sun-Times story showed that, according to the survey, the median size of an occupied home in the country is 1,800 square feet. That’s up from 1,600 square feet in 1985. Homes built since 2007 have a median size of 2,300 square feet, according to the survey.
These houses also come with more rooms. According to the study, 64 percent of homes today have three or more bedrooms. This is a big jump from 1973, when 48 percent of homes had three or more bedrooms. We also have more bathrooms today, with 51 percent of U.S. residences having two or more. In 1973, only 19 percent had two or more bathrooms.
Finally, most homes have the modern conveniences that make life easier. According to the survey, 98 percent of homes have a telephone, 66 percent a dishwasher, 84 percent a washing machine, 99 percent complete plumbing facilities and 65 percent central air conditioning.
The Sun-Times story also contained some interesting information about Chicagoans and how they live. According to the story, about 60 percent of households in the Chicago area live in residences that they own. That is in line with most of the nation, where about 59 percent of households live in homes that they own. In Chicago, 51 percent of homeowners live in single-family detached homes. Across the country, though, 63 percent of homeowners live in these types of residences.
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