Chicago Illinois Real Estate Blog

Equity Residential, benefiting from the moribund housing market, reported surging third-quarter results Wednesday evening.
The Chicago-based real estate investment trust, which owns more than 400 U.S. apartment properties, said funds from operations climbed 18 percent to $200 million, or 63 cents per diluted share, from $169.7 million, or 55 cents per share, in the year-earlier period.
Funds [...]

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Farmland values in one of the most productive regions in the U.S. Midwest rose 17 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier as higher grain prices made real estate more attractive, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said in an e-mailed report.
Rising demand for wheat, corn and soybeans boosted earnings, supporting higher land [...]

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Sales of second-quarter existing homes in the Chicago area fell 16.6 percent from the same period last year, to 19,799 homes sold, the Illinois Association of Realtors said Wednesday.
The median price of all single-family homes and condominiums sold in the nine-county region also recorded a double-digit fall, dropping 13.3 percent to $170,000.
Within the city of [...]

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Dirk Degenaars and Caroline L. Degenaars bought a four-bedroom, 3.5-bath home at 328 Warwick Road in Kenilworth from Joan W. Moore and Charles J. Moore for $1.7 million on June 16.
The Moores paid $800,000 for the property in Aug. 1990. The 2,464-square-foot house was built in 1919 in East Kenilworth.
Mr. Degenaars works as a managing [...]

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Property taxes for schools would be raised to the maximum allowed by law for the first time in four years — costing the average homeowner an extra $84 — under a proposed Chicago Public School budget released Friday.
School officials also want to tap $241 million in reserve funds, eliminate $100 million in scheduled raises to [...]

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While the real estate market continues to struggle toward recovery in Illinois and throughout the country, the most recent Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index had some good news for Chicago homeowners.
According to the report, home prices in the Chicago metropolitan area in May increased 1.7 percent over the previous month, but when compared to [...]

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A program used to analyze housing data has been identified as the cause of inflated median price calculations for the city of Chicago, the Illinois Association of Realtors announced today.
The program failed to recognize some data fields and subsequently eliminated an average of 11 percent of records per month beginning in November 2010; originally, they [...]

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The Illinois Association of Realtors is trying to figure out a little price inflation. Last week the trade group admitted that it had been releasing some overly cheery housing data for Chicago. For example, last month the IAR had the median existing condo price in the city for May at $290,000 when it should have [...]

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A federal judge set bond at $450,000 for ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and ordered him to post his North Side house and Washington condo as collateral even though the former governor’s lawyers said the Chicago residence is for sale.
"I have no intention of violating the bond," Blagojevich said after U.S. District Judge James Zagel issued the [...]

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The Illinois Association of Realtors confessed Monday that it has overstated the median price for homes sold in Chicago — possibly since it began reporting city data as its own category in early 2008.
The group said the mistake occurred in data processing and was not intentional. It acknowledged that data exaggerated the median sales price [...]

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