The HousingWire.com report provides very welcome news to real estate professionals in most markets across the country. The National Association of Realtors reported that pending home sales on signed contracts were up for the eighth consecutive month in September. The NAR reported that pending sales rose 6.1 percent from August to September and were 21.2 percent higher than the previous September. "What...

DSNews.com reports that billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross, says that the U.S. is at the very beginning of a "huge crash in commercial real estate" and that he would exercise "extreme caution" before investing in this sector of real estate. "All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously," Ross said in a Bloomberg interview. "Occupancy rates are going down....

The Wall Street Journal reports a bit of news that discount real estate brokerages have been eagerly looking forward to for some time. The article said that the Federal Trade Commission has ordered an affiliate of the National Association of Realtors in the Detroit region to stop certain practices that the federal agency determined illegally discriminated against discount real estate brokers. The FTC...

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis's Burgundy Book—a financial report issued quarterly about economic activity in Louisville, Little Rock, St. Louis and Memphis—said that the health of Louisville's economy was mixed this past summer. Published in September, the report said that car dealerships and general retailers declared some successes that were tempered by low sales in some sectors....

One Louisville commercial real estate property owner said he hadn't been able to find a tenant for his small retail building he co-owns on Shelbyville Road in 15 months. This Louisville Courier-Journal article reports that the owner's building had never been vacant for longer than a month in 25 years. "That ought to tell you something," the developer said. "I believe it's a sign of the market." He...

Foreclosed homes in Louisville that have been sitting vacant and tough to sell are selling unexpectedly well at local real estate auctions. Online real estate auction company, Auction.com, held an auction at the Seelbach Hotel recently that brought out a wide range of people interested in buying Louisville foreclosed homes. "They bid on the property and if they win the property we put them in contract...

As the federal tax credit program for first-time homebuyers is ending, some Louisville homebuyers are taking advantage of Kentucky's lesser-known $5000 tax credit for buying a new house. Kentucky's tax credit went into effect last July 26 and although it cannot be combined with the federal tax credit, Louisville real estate professionals say it is having a positive impact on home sales. The state's tax...

Real estate professionals have known for years that a furnished home sells much faster than a vacant one. Homeowners and real estate professionals across the country are turning to the process of virtual staging in an effort to sell the many thousands of vacant homes across the country. According to testimonials from real estate agents using this technique with great success, it generates strong buyer...

Commercial real estate owners and developers will get some much-needed flexibility to rework their mortgages or receive loan extensions under a new federal tax rule that could provide some relief to a deeply troubled sector of the real estate market. The new Internal Revenue Service rule will affect loans that are backed by office parks, office buildings, shopping malls and other types of commercial real...

During the second quarter of 2009, some parts of the country saw modest gains in economic recovery, but Louisville's economy still appears to be struggling according to a Metro Monitor study released recently by the Brookings Institute. In a ranking of 100 metro areas in the U.S. measured by the unemployment rate, gross metropolitan product, housing prices and percentage of change in employment,...