Chicago Illinois Real Estate Blog

With loan defaults rising, analysts say the struggling commercial real estate industry is poised to fall into the worst crisis since the last great property bust of the early 1990s.
Delinquency rates on loans for hotels, offices, retail and industrial buildings have risen sharply in recent months and are likely to soar through the end of [...]

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A Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst predicted on Tuesday that Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc.’s luxury hotel portfolio will "significantly underperform" its peers in the lodging industry.
Analyst Rod Petrik maintained a "Hold" rating on the stock of the real estate investment trust, whose hotels include the Fairmont and InterContinental in Chicago.
"Strategic’s hole gets bigger as [...]

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For homeowners stuck with expensive mortgages on houses they can’t sell, President Obama served up a $75 billion program — in addition to another $200 billion to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — Wednesday to ease their burden.
The plan doubles the federal guarantee, to $400 billion, for mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie — which hold [...]

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With more job losses and worries over the economy, the National Association of Realtors is reporting that investment activity in commercial real estate is at a standstill.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, noted, "Although access to residential mortgages has improved, the opposite is true for commercial loans. We need liquidity for commercial mortgage-backed securities not only [...]

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The Bush administration said Wednesday that it was changing its nearly-moribund mortgage rescue plan in an effort to spark more lenders and homeowners to participate.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Hope for Homeowners mortgage rescue plan, which Congress toiled over for months before passing legislation last summer, took effect Oct. 1.
The program aimed to [...]

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