Chicago-area real estate may be warming up, but sales remain frozen in other parts of the country.

Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs, invest in and operate income-generating real estate. And the hot trend in REIT investment today is apartment buildings.

Housing affordability is the best it’s been in decades due to low interest rates and home prices. So why are more people renting than buying?

Hong Kong has been experiencing some tumultuous times of its own: home prices have increased 13 percent this year on top of a 30 percent jump in 2009.

Ventas Inc.’s recent acquisition of Lillibridge Healthcare Services bodes well for the company’s future.

As “mortgage-backed security” became a dirty word, security underwriters backed off the playing field. But toward the end of April, California-based Redwood Trust Inc. became the first to tag back in.

Photo source: City of Austin

With the first-time homebuyer’s tax credit set to expire in April and home prices at generational lows, people–especially young people–are able to buy their first homes a lot sooner than many expected.

Some gloomy numbers loomed over the real estate market this week when national home sales and prices dropped, while mortgage rates creeped up.

“Demand to buy homes is really weak,” said Patrick Newport, economist at IHS Global Insight.

Four of the city’s real estate all-stars—an appraiser, investor, academic  and analyst—spent a little over two hours bemoaning the industry’s bleak 2010 fate at Thursday’s Chicago Association of Realtors Forecast. Then, they boiled their complicated, chart-heavy predictions into a bookmark-sized Letterman-esque top 10 list.

BY MEGAN MOLLMANN – MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Although there was good news this week that housing prices are on the rebound, the aftershocks of the housing bubble are still being felt.

Chicago’s foreclosure rate shot up 30.3 percent in the first half of 2009 compared with January through June of 2008, according to a [...]