Housing Bulletin—Agents of Change

December 29, 2020February 6, 2008 by Chicago Magazine

Have you wondered what real-estate agents have been doing with their time during this super-slow market? Well, it seems many of them have been pressed into service as lobbyists. Over the past two weeks, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has been urging its membership to push Congress and the President to enact sensible rule changes on lending that could help huge numbers of homebuyers better afford their houses. At the same time, the Chicago Association of Realtors (CAR) has been waging a vigorous campaign against the proposed increase in the city real-estate transfer tax that is a key part of the state’s mass-transit funding package. The Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR) has signed on to the coalition CAR pulled together for that fight.

First, let’s look at the national picture. NAR’s efforts revolve around a potential change in the guidelines that define a jumbo mortgage. Jumbo mortgages have a higher interest rate than other loans; the idea is…

Sale of the Week—Roscoe Village Edwardian

January 4, 2021February 4, 2008 by Chicago Magazine

List Price: $1,599,000
Sale Price: $1,550,000
The Property: The rich Edwardian detail of this new Roscoe Village house sets it apart from its contemporaries in the neighborhood. There’s the Mary Poppins–impression of the façade, with headboards and shutters adorning the windows, a slate-shingled gable front, and a pair of fluted Doric columns flanking the front door. The layers of detail continue inside: in the living room, with a row of five Ionic columns between stained-glass panels displaying a Greek key pattern; in the staircase, with a wood-trimmed half-moon cutout in the wall…

On the Market—Garden Splendor in Fort Sheridan

January 4, 2021January 31, 2008 by Chicago Magazine

List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: When the picturesque but obsolete Fort Sheridan military base on the Lake Michigan bluffs between Highland Park and Lake Forest was being converted to a residential neighborhood in the late 1990s, a key member of the redevelopment team, Richard Stein, called dibs on what must have seemed at the time like a questionable parcel. While some of his teammates snapped up handsome blufftop homes that had housed the base’s top officers, Stein took a long, squat building a few blocks from the lakefront…

Housing Bulletin—Who Benefits from Another Fed Rate Cut

December 29, 2020January 30, 2008 by Chicago Magazine

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its rate again later today, but that doesn’t mean you should call your mortgage broker this afternoon in search of a lower payment. You should have called yesterday.

There is a widespread misconception that mortgage rates are directly connected to the Fed’s funds rate. In fact, the relationship is more along the lines of “Me and My Shadow”: the two tend to move approximately in step with one another, but neither one orders the other around.

“Mortgage bond markets meet every day, much more often than the Fed,” says Dan Green, a mortgage planner and loan officer at Mobium Mortgage here in Chicago and the author of themortgagereports.com. “Most of what the Fed is responding to has already been…