Economists know that the prices of houses tend to drop in the aftermath of a nearby wildfire. But a new paper reveals good news for those who have invested in vulnerable woodland property: Unless you can literally see the fire scar from your home, these prices rebound within a couple of years. Shawn McCoy and… Read more »
October 2003 stands out in Chicagoans’ memory for the Cubs’ infamous collapse one game shy of the World Series. Now there’s another reason to curse that month: Nearly 13 years later, local home values are about the same as they were at the time of that Cubs crash. An index of Chicago-area single-family home values… Read more »
I had anticipated some of the rewards and discoveries of visiting cities in the process of economic and cultural recovery and re-invention. An unexpected reward has been the chance to get a time-capsule view, a kind of real-life time-line diorama, of how the downtown areas of cities look through all the stages of a decline-and-rise… Read more »
Lawrence Yun, the Realtor group’s chief economist, said the biggest factor working against the recovery is the lack of homes for sale. The housing inventory is where it should be in a healthy market. If sales were to continue at the current pace, there would be a 5.6 month supply, the group said. But potential… Read more »