By Peter Ricci Bidding wars are normally the ultimate sign of a hot real estate market, that demand for real estate is so stratospheric that prospective homebuyers are nearly falling over themselves with offers for the homes. Sadly, bidding

By Peter Ricci It’s a narrative that many real estate professionals are all too aware of – a distressed property appears in a certain market, where it sits for months and negatively impacts the selling prices of the surrounding

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene will be merging its operations with ERA Bogany Properties, effective September 1, 2012. As a result of the merger, Bogany’s office at 4710 Bellaire Boulevard will become the new home of

By Stephanie Sims Interested in what prospective clients think of the market? Redfin’s latest quarterly homebuyer survey answers could help you better reach and help your clients. Less than two weeks ago, Redfin collected data from 829 people across

By Peter Ricci The multifamily housing sector has been a true anomaly; while housing construction has bounced along on a largely sideways path for most of 2012, multifamily housing has been booming, with multifamily housing starts up 30 percent

By Peter Ricci The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings, rose 2.4 percent from June to July and reached its highest level in more than two years, or, since the expiration

By Peter Ricci The Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which we wrote about earlier today, is undoubtedly the most influential monitor for the nation’s home prices in the current market. But such enthusiasm, as Inman News has demonstrated in the past,

By Peter Ricci The National Association of Realtors’ new real estate TV ad is garnering quite a bit of attention in the real estate community, and not all of it good. Titled “Moving Pictures,” the ad plays from the

All three composites of the Case-Shiller Home Price Indices ended 2012’s second quarter with positive annual growth rates, the first time that’s happened since the summer of 2010, according to the latest data from Standard & Poor’s. Though S&P does not track

Real estate appraisals are among the more consistent topics that we cover here at Chicago Agent, and for good reason – though real estate, after a prolonged slumber, has been posting some of its best numbers in years, the most

By Peter Ricci Shadow housing inventory and government-held REO inventory have both been on a steady decline the last couple years, and if new short sale guidelines from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) fulfill their aims, they’re a

By Peter Ricci The National Association of Realtors (NAR) did some serious political flexing this week with the GOP and its stance on the mortgage interest tax deduction. The Republican Party boldly excluded the deduction – long the third

By Carlo Calma, Peter Ricci On account of rising mortgage interest rates, mortgage applications fell 7.4 percent for the week ending August 17, according to the latest Weekly Mortgage Application Survey from the Mortgage Banker’s Association (MBA). And indeed, rates

By Peter Ricci New residential home sales increased 25.3 percent year-over-year in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 372,000, according to the latest joint report from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban

By Stephanie Sims Home sales in Houston continue to rise while existing housing inventory has fallen to its lowest level since February 2007 – 5.3 months supply. Across the area, according to the Houston Chronicle, agents sold 6,324 single-family

By Carlo Calma The Houston Association of Realtors (HAR) has announced the results of their annual board of directors election, according to its website. The 2013 batch of executive committee members and officers will be installed at a ceremony