Downers Grove Real Estate

There is plenty of property out there to be sold, and you might be thinking that you could easily go online and find your dream house. But if you want to save money, the best thing to do is to find a good real estate agent before you do anything else.

A real estate agent will help you save money in a number of ways. Here are a few:
• They are familiar with the area, so you won’t waste time and gas driving around.
• A real estate agent has all the updated foreclosure and short sale lists. They even have information that the average citizen can’t get.
• When bargaining for the house, they make a good deliberator, which allows you to bargain down more often.
• A real estate agent is familiar with the financing and can help you with qualifying.
• They can also help you sell the house you’re in, while shopping for the new property.

The media can make buying and selling property look so easy on TV, or you may think, ‘I bought property 10 years ago’ and that may be true, but there weren’t the foreclosures and short sales to available like there are today. These are somewhat different to deal with, but this is where your savings is going to be also. They are plentiful, but In order to find the best property for you and your family, the smart thing to do is to get a real estate agent and work through them.

Many people are waiting to see if 2011 will finally be the year that the housing market in Chicago hits the bottom. Some analysts are speculating that the housing market in Chicago might not rebound until sometime between 2014 to 2019. In the meantime, prices in Chicago continue to fall and it truly is a buyers market. It should be noted that almost 40 percent of sales in Chicago are distressed properties.

It is estimated that about 39 percent of mortgage holders in the city of Chicago are underwater. The term underwater means that they owe more on their home than it is worth. Many of these mortgage holders want out and are willing to sell for low prices just to get out of the home. This makes for the perfect market for buyers and investors. There are quite a few great deals to be found on the Chicago housing market right now. Prices for homes in Chicago are currently down 13 percent from the same time last year.

Chicago is a large city and obviously hasn’t escaped the housing crisis or bad economic times that the rest of the United States as faced. People are having hard times financially and when those hard times are combined with falling housing prices, people look to sell. The bottom for the Chicago housing market just might be 2011, but even if it is, prices aren’t expected to decline a significant amount from where they are currently. This is still a great time for smart buyers to get great deals on property in Chicago.