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From Crain’s Chicago Real Estate | A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive has told a North Side alderman that the retail giant has not signed an agreement to lease a store in the Lakeview neighborhood.
“Wal-Mart has not executed a lease or a letter of intent with the developer to locate a store on the property known as Broadway at Surf,” Maggie Sans, a Wal-Mart vice-president of public affairs and government relations, said in a statement. Get the full story>>
The Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program is on target to prevent only 700,000 foreclosures, not the 4 million the Treasury Department originally estimated when it introduced the program, according to a Congressional Oversight Panel report issued Tuesday. Get the full story »
Crain’s Chicago Business | Chicago fashion designer Ikram Goldman, known for her ties to First Lady Michelle Obama, is moving her boutique from Rush Street to larger quarters on Huron.
ELITE STREET | By Bob Goldsborough | Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson has paid $1.32 million for a four-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot town house fronting the Chicago River in a gated development in River West. Get the full story »
An index that measures how many homeowners are underwater on their mortgages fell for the third consecutive quarter but the decrease was more attributed to completed foreclosures than any gain in home values.
About 10.8 million U.S. homes, or 22.5 percent of all homes with mortgages had negative equity, meaning the homeowner owed more on the mortgage than the home was worth at the end of the third quarter, data provider CoreLogic said Monday. That compares with 11 million properties, or 23 percent of all homes in the second quarter. Get the full story »
From the Chicago Sun-Times | Target is in the final stages of talks for a deal to anchor the former Carson Pirie Scott store at 1 S. State, a Chicago landmark designed by Louis Sullivan. Target has been interested in the old Carson’s building, now called Sullivan Center, for months. Two sources said a lease is close to be completed, but details could not be learned. Get the full story>>
U.S. mortgage rates extended their bounce from recent record lows in the latest week, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of mortgage rates, as Treasury yields continue to climb.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.61 percent for the week ended Thursday, up from the prior week’s 4.46 percent but down from 4.81 percent a year ago. Get the full story »
Children's Memorial Hospital, pictured here in Lincoln Park, is relocating to Streeterville, around Northwestern Memorial Hospital. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Children’s Memorial Hospital said Thursday that it is studying whether its property up for sale in Lincoln Park could “qualify as a Tax Increment Financing district.”
Setting up the six-acred property that is for sale at Fullerton Parkway and Lincoln Avenue would result in the allocation of “future increases in property taxes from a designated area to pay for improvements within that area,” officials from Children’s said. “The program typically lasts up to 23 years after the creation of the TIF district.” Get the full story »
Consumers are expected to get better control on their mortgage and credit-card payments next year as the economy slowly improves.
Chicago-based credit reporting firm TransUnion predicts that delinquencies, or late payments, on the two biggest major forms of borrowing will drop sharply again in 2011, after substantial declines seen in the second half of this year. Get the full story »
Brazil might be an exception to the rule of thumb that says avoid the asset everyone’s piling into, according to the chief executive of Equity International, the international arm of real estate mogul Sam Zell. Get the full story »
The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department said Wednesday it would investigate charges almost two dozen lenders have unfairly denied U.S. government-backed mortgages to qualified loan applicants.
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition filed a fair housing complaint with HUD against 22 lenders that offer loans guaranteed by HUD’s Federal Housing Administration. Get the full story »
From Chicago Real Estate Daily | Chicago-based daily deal company Groupon plans to expand its headquarters at 600 W. Chicago Ave. by about 57,000 square feet.
From the Chicago Sun-Times | Mayor Richard Daley is proposing a property tax break to bring a secod Costco to Chicago, this time to the Near South Side at 14th and Ashland Avenue. Daley said the project would create 600 construction jobs, 125 full-time jobs and 125 part-time positions. — in a move that could set a precedent for Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers. Costco currently has a store on Clybourn and Division in Lincoln Park. Get the full story>>
A view of the uncompleted Spire development's foundation, Sep. 17, 2010. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune)
Irish developer Garrett Kelleher’s company has lost control of the site on which he expected to build the Chicago Spire.
A Cook County Circuit Court judge has granted a request by Anglo Irish Bank Corp. Ltd., the lender to Kelleher’s Shelbourne North Water Street L.P., and appointed a receiver for the infamous hole in the ground that was supposed to become a twisting skyscraper addition to the city’s skyline.
Meanwhile, two local firms have purchased the delinquent property taxes on the stalled development site at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, setting up a process for the bank or others to redeem the taxes. Get the full story »
Nearly half of consumer say they are comfortable with the idea of walking away from homes with underwater mortgages — an ominous sign if the expected rise in foreclosures next year puts additional pressure on home prices.
Some 48 percent of homeowners with a mortgage said they’d consider a strategic default if the amount they owned on their mortgage was higher than the value of the property. Six months ago, just 41 percent of consumers said they’d consider it, according to a survey released Tuesday by realty Web sites Trulia and RealtyTrac. Get the full story »
