How many new homes were added to the latest Improving Markets Index? Where did Illinois home sales end up for 2011? And has housing finally bottomed out? We take a look at this week’s real estate news, Feb. 6

The finances of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the affects that delinquent loans have had on them, have been a constant source of media coverage the last couple of months, with some predicting the future bailout of the agency

A quick glance through the news feeds these past couple weeks yields many good developments for the housing market. Along with improved residential construction numbers, strong local sales and a rebound in consumer confidence, there were huge jumps in multifamily

The Federal government and state Attorneys General have reached an agreement with the five largest mortgage services to address mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure abuses. The $26 billion dollar agreement is unprecedented and  will provide financial relief to homeowners

A recent report out of Bloomberg says that BofA is struggling to keep up with the deluge of mortgage refinancing applications that have followed revisions to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), so much so that they are asking

The fourth quarter may be a time of plummeting temperatures in Chicago and greater Illinois, but the change of the seasons had little effort on the quarter’s home sales, which posted surging gains for both areas. According to the

The National Association of Home Builder’s (NAHB) 55+ Housing Market Index (HMI), a specialized index that follows the 55+ housing market, posted year-over-year gains for the fourth quarter in 2011. Along with gains in construction and a 29-city addition to the

Milwaukee-based home loan insurer Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp. (MGIC) may have posted a loss of $135.3 million for the fourth quarter in 2011, but that’s down from $186.7 million in 2010, a decline of nearly 30 cents a share

Fannie Mae has announced the expansion of their Online Offers system through HomePath properties. The system will collect and manage offers for all Fannie Mae owned properties, except auction properties. The Online Offers pilot was launched in 2010 in

Strategic defaults, a Chapter 11-esque move in which homeowners walk away from their property and stop paying their mortgage, are happening with increasing regularity in today’s housing market, and if current legislation is any indication, they are happening much

Fannie Mae yesterday released its National Housing Survey for January 2012, delivering data that confirms a slowly accumulating rise in consumer confidence and expectations. Doug Duncan, the vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae, said recent employment numbers,

“The housing bottom” is a term that gets thrown around quite often, normally in the context that once a bottom is reached, an inevitable (and long-awaited) housing recovery will quickly commence. Over at Calculated Risk, the news is both

The fourth quarter of 2011 was a productive period for multifamily originations, which increased by 31 percent year-over-year according to the latest research by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Pooled with other loan offerings, including industrial property loans, retail

The Obama White House released its latest Housing Scorecard yesterday, and the report provides a sweeping view of many of the various components of the housing market, from sales, to refinancing to inventories. Developed and released by the Department

The National Association of Home Builders/First American Improving Markets Index added 29 more metropolitan areas to its ever-expanding Improving Markets Index (IMI), a specially-crafted survey of the nation’s best-performing urban areas. Now representing 36 states, the IMI has grown exponentially

The PMI Group, the embattled mortgage insurer, granted Fannie Mae mortgage servicers with short sale rights late last week, a measure that allows further access to the pre-foreclosure sales strategy. Typically, a mortgage insurance company must approve short sales