Over the past several years, Real Estate has become a major topic of conversation in every workplace and social arena.  You just can’t get away from someone saying something about real estate!  You see it on the news, watch it on the many “Sell, Flip and Fix This House” style programs, read about it in the newspaper headlines or homes sections, listen to it on every radio program, hear about it from Ben Bernanki, our newest Fed Chairman…continue to hear about it from our former Fed Chairman, Greenspan and discuss it at all the cocktail parties, local parks and even at church ……. just about anywhere and everywhere!  And if you Google “real estate”, you get 413 million sites, blogs, articles and opinions……getting close to ½ billion!

This is totally understandable.  Real estate continues to be for most of us, our single largest investment. 

Something has changed dramatically……today we are hearing over and over again that national news about Real Estate can have very limited value. Real Estate is not like buying Google or Dell.  Whether you buy stock in these companies while living in Texas, Florida or LaGrange Park is irrelevant. The buy or sell prices don’t vary by the area you live in. 

Certainly today, Real Estate is local!  We have been reminded that the old “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION” concept is an important key, still today.  Many of the stories with “expert opinions”, average prices, inventory numbers, declines, gains etc. are national or regional generalizations.  Even if we simply look at State of Illinois statistics, the numbers are not representative of our area. For example, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors website, the most recent report of State of Illinois median home prices for the 3^rd quarter of 2007 was $209,000 with an average of $272,632.  Even if we distill this to just Cook county, median home prices were $276,000.

Though this information is interesting, it obviously does not give us an accurate picture our local marketplace.  Again, “real estate is really, really local”. 

During my term as President of the Realtor Association of West-South Suburban Chicagoland (now Mainstreet Organization of Realtors), I insisted that our Realtor association distribute monthly and quarterly and year to date sales statistics by community to our Realtor Members.  As you can imagine, in a very short time, this section of our Realtor association website has become the most popular with our 14,000+ members.

Unfortunately, for the consumer, it isn’t quite as easy to obtain these statistics by community or neighborhood.  You don’t belong to an association that will provide statistics just on your neighborhood though certainly, you are interested and in my opinion, are entitled.

Because I feel so strongly that you are entitled to all the information, whether or not you are buying or selling, my company will compile and publish data by community using the same Multiple Listing Service data that the Realtors and their associations have access to.  What will provided to you in this new monthly publication “The Prime Times” will be real estate market data for the Western Cook communities including La grange, La Grange Park, Brookfield, Countryside, Indian Head Park, Willow Springs, Riverside, Countryside, Western Springs and more. 

In addition, there will be relevant and timely articles on financing (and refinancing), home improvement strategies and values, and other interesting topics pertaining to one of your biggest investments…..your home.

I hope that you will take the time to take a look at our new newspaper style monthly publication and I also hope it will be valuable to you by providing local information that has not been available before.  Please feel free to email me at primetimes@primeanytime.com with any suggestions on topics or comments about this new publication.  I look forward to your suggestions.

To see our latest issue, please click here.