Mortgage Rates Inch Up as Housing Prices Fall
After 11 weeks of consistent interest rates drop mortgage rates are back up over 5%.
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Archive for the 'Illinois' Category (Chronologically Listed)
Illinois Mortgage Lenders Tighten Standards
Once seemingly confined to subprime lending, problems in the Illinois mortgage industry showed signs of spreading to more-creditworthy borrowers Friday, triggering concerns about the potential fallout on the real estate market.
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Posted by Jed Moss on Aug 06 2007 under Illinois
Chicago Mortgage Advice For Struggling Families
Families facing Illinois mortgage problems have a new place to turn.
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Posted by Richard Barber on Jul 23 2007 under Illinois
Illinois Mortgage Slowdown Decreases Chicago Home Sales
Home sales in the Chicago housing market plummeted 20.7% last month compared with May 2006, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors.
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Posted by Jed Moss on Jun 28 2007 under Illinois
National, Illinois Mortgage Rates Force Buyers to Consider Options
On recent evenings, Pat Wendelken goes online and peeks at the posted mortgage rates. She winces at what she sees.
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Posted by Jed Moss on Jun 21 2007 under Illinois, Mortgage Rates
Illinois Home Prices Steady, Mortgage Activity Slows
Home prices in Illinois held steady in the first quarter of 2007, but sales plummeted more than 14 percent from the year-ago figures, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors.
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Posted by Jed Moss on May 17 2007 under Illinois
Chicago Housing Market Feels Same Ill Effects as Rest of Illinois
Dashing hopes that the housing slump would soon bottom out, new-home sales in the Chicago housing market fell even faster in the first quarter as the market meltdown spread from the suburbs to the city.
Posted by Jed Moss on May 02 2007 under Illinois
Southern Illinois Housing Markets Remain Strong
It didn’t take Teena Stults long to find the right house for the right price, after meeting with her real estate agent Wednesday afternoon to discuss buying the house, located in Collinsville, Ill.
Posted by Richard Barber on Apr 27 2007 under Illinois
Illinois Mortgage Experts Can’t See the Future
Illinois housing market predictions are generally best left to those in the know, but these days even the experts aren’t weighing in.
“If I had a crystal ball, it would be cloudy,” said Donald Parisi, president of the Realtor Association of the Fox Valley, which covers Kane County from Batavia north to Algonquin.
Posted by Jed Moss on Apr 17 2007 under Illinois
Rising Inventory in Illinois Housing Market Leads to Deals for Home Mortgage Seekers
With inventory stacking up and few Illinois mortgage seeks in sight, home sellers are starting to sweeten the deal - dangling plasma TVs, free appliance upgrades and offers to pay a year’s worth of assessments or property taxes - in the hope of enticing casual house hunters into signing on the dotted line.
“We all need buyers quite a bit,” says Tom Gilfillan, a northwest suburban Coldwell Banker agent.
Spring is traditionally the residential real estate industry’s busiest time. But with mounting inventory and a dearth of buyers, this selling season promises to be one of the most painful in memory for agents. Some say it could be a test of just how deep the real estate recession is in the Chicago housing market.
“This (season) will be one of the most closely watched in a while,” says Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at LaSalle Bank in Chicago.
Some agents say traffic at open houses is picking up now that it’s spring, but they acknowledge that it’s harder to convert that traffic into sales.
“I’m telling all of my sellers, give me six months,” says Barbara Floyd, a Re/Max Signature real estate agent who’s sold real estate in Chicago for more than 20 years. “It’s taking longer to sell. . . . You can’t sugarcoat it.”
With homes languishing on the market for an average of 131 days — up from 84 in March 2006 — the supply of homes for sale in Cook County as of last week had risen 38% from last year to 43,339, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLS).
Prices, however, have held up: The average sale price for a single-family home in Cook County rose to $303,375 in February, an 8% increase from a year earlier, MLS says.
But there are signs that sellers are beginning to crack on price.
Steven Huck helped his mother sell her Mount Prospect home last summer. The house was on the market for four months, one of 42 for sale in town within the same price range. After slashing the price 20%, the Hucks found a mortgage loan borrower for it.”We thought it was going to go a lot quicker because everyone liked the house,” Mr. Huck recalls.
The oversupply situation isn’t lost on those few buyers out there, says LaSalle’s Mr. Tannenbaum. The result: a game of chicken.
“If buyers sense that there are going to be bargains out there, and a lot of sellers are very reluctant to lower (prices) . . . the result of that is the waiting game,” he says.
And as property listings are multiplying, the pool of potential buyers is shrinking, notes Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Chicago’s Northern Trust Co. Stricter mortgage financing terms will disqualify many people looking to buy this spring, Mr. Kasriel predicts.
In the past, “anyone who had a pulse could get a mortgage,” he says. But “people who would have been able to buy a year ago are not going to be able to buy now.”
The slowdown in sales — fewer than 1,500 single-family homes sold in Cook County in February, a 20% drop from last year — has been sobering for some agents, especially those who flocked to the business during the boom, says Coldwell Banker’s Mr. Gilfillan.
“This is a rude thing for them,” he says. “They thought you could just get a license and stop by the Mercedes dealer, but that’s not how it works.”
Northern’s Mr. Kasriel sees no relief ahead.
“Realtors are going to have to work harder, and some of them are going to be taking other jobs because there’s not enough income to go around,” he says. “I think this spring will be a standout as one to remember - or maybe one they’ll want to forget.”
Posted by Jed Moss on Mar 27 2007 under Illinois