A small building on McHenry Street that once housed the offices for the Louisville Textile Mill reopened recently with a very different purpose. The building in Louisville's Germantown neighborhood is the new home of Germantown Daycare, which will be able to care for up to 115 children between the ages of six months and 12 years old. The building's owner, Richard Morris, took extra care to retain the...

A parcel of land called "the single-most important piece of real estate" in Louisville by one local historian is finally getting the recognition many feel is long overdue. The former site of Fort-on-Shore, the first mainland building and settlement in Louisville, has long been overlooked as other nearby Revolutionary War sites received recognition over the years. At long last, that slight is being...

Real estate analysts from the Federal Housing Finance Agency are claiming that lower demand and the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit are continuing to put downward pressure on home prices across the country. Home prices fell 3.2 percent in the third quarter of 2010, down significantly from the same quarter in 2009. The agency said that Atlanta suffered the greatest decline in prices among the 25...

Figures provided by the Mortgage Banker's Association suggest that mortgage delinquency rates declined a bit in the third quarter of 2010, but warn that the coming winter will show little improvement for homeowners struggling to make house payments. The Association reports that foreclosures "declined last quarter amid hints of improvement in the job market, but headwinds from defaults and a rising rate of...

The Louisville commercial real estate market could see its biggest sale since 2004 when the $115 million, all-cash sale of the National City Tower downtown is complete sometime in December. One of several "trophy towers" across the country that are defying downward trends in the commercial real estate markets, the National City Tower most recently sold in 2005 for $95 million. According to insiders, a...

During a down real estate market in which wary buyers prefer to rent instead of making the large financial commitment of buying a home, property management has become a hot topic in real estate circles. A wide range of different property management courses, from one-day seminars to weekend classes to weekday lectures and full 11-week courses, are popping up in many areas of the country. Many...

September sales of Louisville homes continued the recent slump with Louisville real estate agents selling 29 percent fewer homes and condos than they did the previous September.  Members of the Greater Louisville Association of Realtors cited the expired first-time homebuyer tax credit and job uncertainty as the chief reasons for lower home sales. The decrease in home sales began last July here and in...

Louisville area residents who are customers of LG&E can expect to see higher heating bills this winter. The utility company recently told customers that it will hike prices for natural gas by 12 percent to defray the costs of a price increase from their supplier. A LG&E representative told reporters that a typical Louisville residential customer can expect to see his or her monthly bill to climb...

Here's the kind of story that's always welcome. Eighty-two-year-old Middletown resident Bob Haswell recently received a 2010 WLKY Bell Award for community service. Since 1991, when he retired as a mechanical engineer at Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. on Westport Road, Haswell has been helping the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity build homes. He has driven nails, framed windows and doors, laid flooring...

In a time when home sales are down, buyers are nervous, and many homeowners are eager to take advantage of near record low mortgage rates. Mortgage refinancing has been a vital revenue stream for lenders. However, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is predicting that that stream will slow to a trickle if mortgage rates climb to around five percent by the end of 2011 as the MBA foresees. Compared to...