By Peter Ricci In case you missed it, Freddie Mac announced what has by now become common in real estate – mortgage interest rates hit new record lows last week, with the 30-year FRM falling to 3.34 percent and

By Stephanie Sims Before social media, people who felt like they had a bad experience with a business, whether bad customer service, a poor product, etc., would complain to the company. But now, thanks to social media, these people

By Natalie Terchek Real estate company Century 21 is returning to the Super Bowl’s marketing roster for the second year in a row. According to Beverly Thorne, Century 21’s CMO, the company is expected to air a 30-second commercial

By Peter Ricci Lawrence Yun, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, is known for his optimistic predictions about the housing market, and he just recently made another notable projection: home prices, according his projections, will rise by

By Peter Ricci The housing market continued to show signs of incremental improvement in Redfin’s latest Real-Time Seller Survey, a study of the homebuyers attitudes towards real estate in the fourth quarter. A sample of 1,287 homeowners throughout the

By Carlo Calma Laura Stukel, an agent with L.W. Reedy Real Estate in Elmhurst, was awarded the Green REsource Council’s inaugural Green Industry Advocate Award during the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) EverGreen Awards on Sunday. Stukel was recognized for

By Peter Ricci The real estate numbers game, as any agent knows, is not always the most fun of activities. Indeed, pricing a home is a delicate balancing act between accurately valuing the home, attracting potential homebuyers and, of

By Peter Ricci Fresh off the positive financial news from Freddie Mac, sister GSE Fannie Mae is reporting great numbers of its own, with a third quarter net income of $1.8 billion. That income was strong enough, Fannie reported,

By Peter Ricci The Realtor Confidence Index from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) faltered a bit in September, with tight home lending standards stalling the index’s momentum. The index had been rising steadily through most of 2012, and

By Peter Ricci So…what’s next for housing? That’s the question on many real estate professional’s minds, now that the presidential election has finally concluded with the reelection of President Obama. On election day, we surveyed what was at stake for

By Peter Ricci Home prices increased 5 percent year-over-year in the CoreLogic Home Price Index, which is the biggest increase in more than six years for the index and the seventh straight month of yearly increases. On a month-to-month

By Peter Ricci Consumer sentiment towards the housing market has been gradually improving in Fannie Mae’s National Housing Surveys, and a new FindLaw survey has found that the situation is improving other notable ways. According to the FindLaw survey, which

By Peter Ricci Embattled GSE Freddie Mac reported a monster third quarter in its latest financial report, with a net income of $2.9 billion that will allow the firm to avoid drawing additional funds from the U.S. Treasury. It

By Peter Ricci The National Association of Realtors spends quite a bit of money advocating Realtor issues, and nowhere are its expenses more prominent than in the realm of politics. In 2012 alone, NAR contributed $2.92 million to political

By Peter Ricci Asking prices increased 0.7 percent from September to October in the latest Trulia Price Monitor, a survey of all the listings featured on the real estate syndication site. In addition, prices rose 2.9 percent from October

By Peter Ricci Today’s real estate agents should always be thinking of ways to utilize technology to better communicate with their clients and potential homebuyers, and instant messaging programs, which can be incorporated into agent’s real estate websites, are