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In my blog concerning "The Next Great Real Estate Investment" posted on May 5th I highlight the benefit of investing in cheap farm land surrounding Chicago with some highlights of how much land has gone up in Iowa in the past year.

I would love to say I have some power followers for my real estate advice and take credit with what Crains Business Chicago featured in their article concerning Bill Gates buying up Illinois Farmland as highlighted on July 3rd,  Hitting Pay Dirt but I can't.  That's ok.. I'll live.

What it does mean as I highlighted in the original post... many cities in the Midwest like Chicago have always been able to continue building outward because builders could just keep buying cheap farm land to turn into tracts. If gas prices continue…

It's not too hard to pick up something from the media and hear doomsday news about the real estate industry. Generally, the media picks up a story from a heavily speculated real estate market such as Arizona, Florida or Las Vegas real estate and pinpoints a story of a homeowner that paid too much money for their real estate in 2005. Now the prices have gone down  resulting in the homeowner losing valuable equity and their great investment in real estate not being such a great investment for the short term.

These same real estate markets all seem to have something in common - an increase in prices due to speculation by real estate investors that were fueled by sensationalized stories in the media - much like a heavy gust of wind can make a fire turn into…

How nice it is to have a full blown home search on our Las Vegas real estate website with everything that a potential home buyer needs to help narrow down all of the selections! It makes our job so much easier and it's also less confusing for the buyers.... if used properly.

The latest couple we took out to search for Las Vegas real estate for sale actually used it to it's full potential. The beautiful benefit of this is that before we even went out to view the homes in Summerlin and Red Rock Country Club for sale in person, the couple had extensively searched all of the real estate for sale that met their criteria, used our mapping, and dramatically reduced the number of Summerlin homes available for sale that they were interested in viewing in person. Read Full Post

Lake in the Hills is located aprox. 45 miles Northwest of Chicago that has seen tremendous growth in the past 10 years. Once a sleepy farm town, it's now a booming Chicago Suburb with new construction everywhere.

There are often times when a suburb grows so quick and so fast that the overall planning ends up being haphazard... or what I've often referred to as a mishmosh of zoning dictated by developers who are in and out and really don't care about future resale values.  For us, it's easy to spot who was planning the zoning in a particular Chicago Village.

In the case of Lake In The Hills, the tree lined streets, numerous parks, walking trails and nearby forest preserves create a very nice appeal. In a few years as the trees mature this should only add…

There is actually a really good blog post that was posted by Ryan Ward, a REALTOR in Atlanta Georgia titled "NAR to Blame for Third Party Real Estate Listing Websites" and has probably had the most attention I've ever seen on a Real Estate Webmasters blog. One such comment, posted by Jennifer Mackay, a REALTOR in Panama City Florida really brought new light to the subject.

Jennifer makes a great analysis --- "I feel the fault lies mostly with agents who have not and do not take an interest in the workings of not only their local boards, but the national association and the real estate industry as a whole not to mention their own websites."

I agree with this to some extent. It is the inability of individual real estate agents and real estate Brokers to…

I'm going to assume that it's the multi-million dollar advertising budgets of certain third party websites that have created a completely new advertising business that is real estate related.

It's the push (in my opinion) for real estate consumers to search for homes online before searching for a real estate agent.

Like any special interest, advertise it enough and it becomes something that becomes a normal practice. Savvy third party real estate advertising sites know this and obviously are not going to advertise the best way to find real estate except to visit their site in which they can collect your information and resell it to real estate agents, refer it to real estate agents for a fee, or sell real estate advertising space based on a cost of how…

As we hit record gas prices... again...for another excuse (they never seem to end), the use of Hybrid technology has been one of our investment interests since 2002. Let's face it, unless something is done the American Consumer is just going to go through this year in and year out with each year prices going higher and higher due to one excuse or another. Like any commodity, high demand with a dwindling supply equals higher prices. Economics 101.

On Wednesday, The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a 20-3 vote moved ahead with legislation to replace one-quarter of the nation's gasoline with ethanol and set a goal of cutting gas consumption nearly in half by 2030 That's a very lofty goal. If you are into investing in commodity futures then…

We had our eyes on a stunning $1,425,000 Barrington Hills home for a client ... here one day.. gone the next. There seems to have all of a sudden been a surge for homes in Barrington Hills as evidenced by our April of 2007 Barrington Hills Market Report.

According to the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI), 4 homes in Barrington Hills closed escrow in April of 2006 for an average price of $805,625. In April of 2007, 5 homes closed escrow at an average price of $674,600... obviously a pretty big decline in the average selling price in a year over year monthly comparison but with the wide variety of Barrington Hills Real Estate for sale, it's nothing worthy enough for a fear headline in the Chicago Tribune and here is why:

Four Barrington…