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(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Fixed mortgage rates inched down this week, following a dip in Treasury yields.
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage slipped to 5 percent from 5.05 percent last week, Freddie Mac said Thursday. It hit a 40-year low of 4.17 percent in November.
The average rate on the 15-year fixed home loan also fell to 4.27 percent from 4.29 percent. It reached 3.57 percent in November, the lowest level on records dating back to 1991. Get the full story »
Partially completed townhouses in Des Plaines, Ill., in March of 2010. (Tim Boyle/Bloomberg)
U.S. housing starts rose more than expected in January to their highest rate in four months but permits for future home construction dropped sharply after hefty gains the prior month, according to a government report on Wednesday that showed the housing market still bouncing along the bottom.
The Commerce Department said housing starts jumped 14.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 596,000 units, the highest since September. December’s starts were revised down to a 520,000-unit pace from the previously reported rate of 530,000 units. Get the full story »
The volume of mortgage applications filed in the U.S. last week fell a seasonally adjusted 9.5 percent from the previous week, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday, as higher interest rates versus late last year discouraged recent activity.
Refinance activity was down 11 percent to its lowest reading since the week ending July 3, 2009, according to the MBA’s weekly survey, which covers more than half of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications. Purchasing activity fell 0.9 percent in the week ended Friday. Get the full story »
Outside the former Carson Pirie Scott building on State Street. (Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune)
Target Corp. announced on Tuesday long-anticipated plans to open a store in Chicago’s Loop.
The store, called City Target, will lease space in the Sullivan Center at 1 S. State St., which has been empty since Carson Pirie Scott closed its flagship department store in 2007.
Target plans to open the store next year. The urban format, smaller than the typical Target store, will offer fresh food, apartment essentials and clothing. It will mark the Minneapolis-based discount chain’s 10th store in Chicago and create about 200 jobs.
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Elite Street | By Bob Goldsborough | Former Chicago White Sox relief pitcher Scott Linebrink has listed his 11-room house in Hinsdale for $825,000.
The Sox traded Linebrink, 34, on Dec. 3 to the Atlanta Braves. Now, the middle reliever has decided to sell his home, which he bought in 2008 for $815,000. Get the full story »
Consumer credit default rates dropped in Chicago in January on a monthly and year-over-year basis, according to data released Tuesday by Standard & Poor’s and Experian.
The two firms track default rates across lines of consumer credit such as first and second mortgages, bank cards and auto loans. Chicago is one of five major cities that the S&P/Experian index breaks out separately. In Chicago, the January default rate was 2.74 percent, a decline of 42 percent from January 2010 and down 12 percent from December 2010. Get the full story »
CB Richard Ellis Group is buying most of Dutch bank ING’s Real Estate Investment Management for about $1 billion to diversify its client base, a deal which would help ING pay down state aid. Get the full story »
So how much is Hugh Hefner’s iconic Playboy Mansion really worth?
The issue has arisen in a lawsuit accusing the 84-year-old media mogul of trying to take Playboy Enterprises Inc, the publisher known for nude centerfolds, private in a sweetheart deal at other shareholders’ expense.
In an amended complaint filed February 4 in Delaware Chancery Court, shareholders complained that an October 2010 appraisal valued the 29-room Los Angeles mansion at $54 million, 45 times higher than the $1.2 million shown on Playboy’s books. Get the full story »
The Obama administration on Friday declared the public-private housing finance model in place for the past four decades was dead but pledged to continue backing exisiting obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“The GSE model is dead,” an Obama administration official told reporters as the Treasury Department released a long-awaited report on options to revamp housing reform. Get the full story »
Cubs starting pitcher Ryan Dempster on the mound in August. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Tribune)
ELITE STREET | By Bob Goldsborough | Chicago Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster has reduced the asking price of one of his homes near Wrigley Field from $2.25 million to $1.95 million.
In December 2009, Elite Street broke the news of Dempster’s $2.25 million listing of the 13-room Lakeview mansion, which he purchased in early 2006 from its builder for $1.715 million. Dempster placed the five-bedroom home on the market because he traded up to another, newly-built house a few blocks away that he had purchased in late 2008 for $2.69 million. Get the full story »
Mortgage rates rose in the latest week, with the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages climbing to the highest level since last April, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of mortgage rates.
“Long-term bond yields jumped on positive economic data reports, which placed upward pressure on mortgage rates this week,” said Freddie Chief Economist Frank Nothaft. Get the full story »
The co-owners of a Chicago realty company that managed dozens of condominium properties have been charged with fraud for allegedly stealing more than $2 million in assessment payments, the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago said Thursday.
Donald Doering of Wilmette and Jay Strauss of Scottsdale, Ariz., were each charged with three counts of wire fraud in a federal indictment returned by a grand jury Wednesday. Get the full story »
More than 8,300 homeowners in Illinois received notices from lenders that they’d defaulted on their mortgages and had foreclosures proceedings initiated against them last month, according to a monthly foreclosure report issued Thursday by Web site RealtyTrac.
In addition to the 8,345 homeowners receiving default notices, another 1,908 received notice that their homes were scheduled for court-ordered auction and 2,910 homes in the state were repossessed by lenders. Get the full story »
As earnings reports from homebuilders have dribbled out over the past few weeks, only one company gave a very specific and very positive shout-out to the Chicago market.
That company was M/I Homes Inc., the Columbus, Ohio-based builder that broke ground on its first suburban Chicago home less than three years ago and just finalized the purchase of its seventh local project, one designed to bring 146 town homes to Naperville.
Nationally, the inventory of new homes for sale dropped to 191,000 in December, the lowest number since 1968, according to the National Association of Home Builders. It dropped locally too, but at year’s end, there remained more than a year of available new homes on the market. Get the full story »
From Crain’s Chicago Business | The blizzard that paralyzed Chicago last week also postponed the court-ordered sheriff’s auction of the new mall at Block 37. The auction, which would be the largest foreclosure sale of a downtown property in more than a decade, was set for Feb. 2 after a group of lenders led by Bank of America Corp. obtained a foreclosure judgment in December against the four-level mall at 108 N. State St. Get the full story>>
