OK and Associates Realty Plus's (realtyplus) Blog

Our (Illinois) AG is part of this group.  The full report is published at many sites, the first one to come up on google is here. Here's an article summing up the report: State AGs predict uptick in home foreclosures this year The State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group, made of AGs and state ...

Information from IAR weekly update: The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is expected to announce major changes to its program this week in an effort to build up its capital reserves, according to NAR. FHA will be looking to improve loan quality, increase mortgage insurance premiums and change...

McHenry County has a new site and with it a new link to the county foreclosure list.  The list seems to be more updated than the old scan-and-post lists. Every Thursday, at 10am there a sheriffs in McHenry county. The following link is a list of properties that will be auctioned to the highest bi...

This chart I found on a blog from Philly shows how the top four states stack up against the rest of the country.      Illinois is number four in total numbers, but number seven per capita. See the November 09 numbers in this previous blog post. --- We subscribe to RealtyTrac and are the exclusive...

More RealtyTrac numbers on Illinois as reported by the Tribune: 131,132 homes received a foreclosure filling in 2009 about 1 in every 40 homes received a filing This a 32% increase over 2008 fillings See the November 09 numbers in this previous blog post. --- We subscribe to RealtyTrac and are th...

Dawn Zurick, our top agent at O.K. & Assoc., Realty Plus is now SFR certified.  She completed the course when it first came out early last year and then took all the available webinars in December.  She is also e-PRO and GRI certified and working towards ABR certification this year.  

Illinois is sitting at #7 according to this Bankrate.com article which probably gets these numbers from RealtyTrac.  Also from RealtyTrac, in Illinois there were 16,422 properties getting foreclosure notices (at least 3 months behind on mortgage payments) in November 2009.  This is over a 100% in...

There has been a complete rewrite of the Illinois Real Estate Act.  One of the biggest things affecting agents directly are the new licensing categories.   Below are some of the details to keep in mind. TRUE:  Two new categories, "broker" and "managing broker" replace the old "salesperson" and "b...

This is the second year I remember seeing this.  I don't know if it was done before.  If you buy a new or used car from July 1st to December 31st from a Crystal Lake auto dealer, you can get up to a $250 gift certificate.    It's anywhere from $50 to $250 depending on the price of the car, but it...

Construction on the new area has begun and is expected to be completed by sometime in 2010.  The old Vulcan Lakes quarry will soon be a public lake and beach area.  I hear that the lakes have not been fished and there are rumors of some whoppers living in there!   The project at-a-glance: •·     ...