Category: Market conditions
Reports on the state of the housing market
First look at '08: Sales down 21 percent; new construction hammered
It won't be much surprise to anyone who lives and breathes real estate, but the numbers are sobering nonetheless: Total home sales in Chicago declined [...]
Downtown sales go the wrong way in 4Q '08
Downtown condo developers posted a net loss of 253 sales in the fourth quarter of 2008, a result of canceled contracts outnumbering new sales, accordi [...]
When to buy, when to rent in Chicago
"If you cannot tolerate risk in your life, then you should never own real estate. Never."
In this video David Hall offers that advice, and some ver [...]
Is the South Loop Chicago's Las Vegas?
In this video interview, David Hall refers to the South Loop as "our Las Vegas."
It's a wonderful meme, one that resonates far beyond what Hall int [...]
The tone of Chicago's real estate market
David Hall has seen the ups and downs of Chicago's real estate market during his more than 30 years in the business. The real estate crash of the ea [...]
Is Chicago's Oakland the biggest loser?
According to the Chicago Tribune's heat map of housing price changes over the past 12 months, the near south side Oakland neighborhood is the biggest [...]
W goes the hotel route on Sangamon Street
"Without question this is the right product for the site...This would be killer."
- W Developments principal David Wallach, on his decision to buil [...]
Some buyers want out
We're seeing a growing number of buyers, both at our NewHomeNotebook site, and around the Web, who say they want out of their contracts on new constru [...]
Signs of the times in River North
Jameson Real Estate continues to list and promote Cataldo / Marovitz's Park Kingsbury Luxury Lofts, located at 678 N Kingsbury St in River North, wi [...]
$5K discounts for some "everyday heroes"
Take an additional $5,000 off the price of a new home from Town & Country Homes if you hold one of a long list of jobs that qualifies you as an ev [...]
Market conditions: What it takes to build in 2009
The credit markets are mostly closed to developers unless they're happy to pony up equity worth about 40 percent of the project's cost. Across town ar [...]
Just ignore what the seller paid
About 30 years ago, I bought two condos in a client's conversion in Park Ridge for $56,000 each, and sold them a week after, closing in the low $70s e [...]
Lissner: "There is no more pipeline"
Five days in, everyone seems to have found the story for 2009. Crain's published a story this morning about the imminent completion of more than 2,100 [...]
South Loop – is Edgewater a historical parallel?
The past 10 years have seen a dramatic increase in the supply of condos in Chicago's South Loop, the great majority of them in high-rise buildings. [...]
Sentiment, at this point, is the name of the game
That's the word from Coldwell Banker's Matt Garrison. In this recent interview with Bloomberg TV Garrison offers some advice to help buyers and sell [...]
Chicago condo values show little decline
The S&P / Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are widely watched – and often badly reported on.
Recent storties in the Sun-Times and Tribune (via AP) [...]
Quote of the day – Crazy developers
According to Crain's Chicago Business, AvalonBay Communities, a major residential developer, is deferring plans to build a 1,000-unit apartment comple [...]
Roscoe Village tops list of neighborhoods with most price reductions
Every few weeks, the folks at Redfin crunch the numbers for Chicago real-estate listings and post the results on their Chicago Sweet Digs blog, which [...]
Chicago's downtown condo market – tidbits
We've been remiss in not providing more data and conclusions from Appraisal Research Counselors' 3rd Quarter 2008 Downtown Chicago Residential Benchma [...]
North Siders aren't immune to housing crisis
Although it pales in comparison to the foreclosure-cancer map of West Lawn that Joe Zekas posted last week, this map of Avondale shows one North-Side [...]