Itasca, IL 60143 - Housing Market Analysis

The Village of Itasca is located approximately 25 miles West of the Chicago "Loop" in suburban Dupage County. According to the 2000 census the population was 8,302. The total area of the village is 4.9 square miles.

Itasca is bordered by Elk Grove Village to the north, the village of Wood Dale to the east, the village of Addison to the south, and the village of Roselle to the west.

Recent curbs in sub-prime lending has lowered prices and lengthened marketing times. Defaults and foreclosure activity increased dramatically as ARM interest rates reset higher. Further, declining home prices have made re-financing more difficult. This excess supply of home inventory places significant downward pressure on prices.

According to the Northern Illinois MLS the average sales price in Itasca in the twelve months ending October 31, 2008 for detached homes was $409,358.00 with 184 days on the market, with 36 sales.

Average sales prices have decreased -9.18%, sales volume decreased -13.51% and marketing times have increased +16.46% over the previous twelve months.

In the twelve months ending October 31, 2007 the average for a detached home was $450,754.00 with 158 days on the market, with 37 sales.

There are currently 81 active listings of detached homes in Itasca. At the current level of absorption of 3.00 sales per month this represents a 27.00 month supply of existing housing inventory.A 3 to 4 months supply of inventory is considered "in balance", this is an oversupply.

Housing prices are expected to continue declining until this inventory of surplus homes (excess supply) is reduced to more typical levels.

All of this points to a cooling market, long marketing times and lower prices in 2009. If you have an active listing or need to sell now is the time to get an appraisal. The market has changed and only the most competitively priced homes will be selling soon.

How to be sure that your listing is competitive? Get a current appraisal. Complete appraisals of single family homes and condominiums start at $275.00. this is a small price to pay for knowledge that will help you position your house in the current market.

Citywide Services provides residential appraisal service in Itasca, Il. 60143. Our appraisers are state certified and have experience with single family homes, town houses, condominiums as well as small residential income properties. For all your Dupage County appraisal needs contact Citywide 1-800-405-9718

http://www.appraisercitywide.com/

Open House - Palm Springs, CA

Palm Springs open houses. Palm Springs real estate. Palm Springs homes for sale.

Open house 1444 S Cerritos in Los Compadres, a great south-end neighborhood.

4 bdrms, 3 baths, pool/spa. Vaulted ceilings. Lots of glass for natural light. Asking $689,126.

Please come take a look this Saturday, November 1, 2008, 12-3pm. If you can't make it during that time, contact me and I'll arrange a showing for you.

Thank you!

Russell Hill 760.902.3121

Go to the link above for property information, locator map and additional pictures.

Home prices to decline further - stabilizing in 2010

Fitch Ratings expects home prices to drop another 10 percent before stabilizing in 2010. So far, home prices have fallen 22 percent and will likely decrease by 30 percent from peak prices in 2006. Fitch indicated that the expected drop would reverse the home price increases achieved between 2004 and 2006. Prices are currently at early 2004 levels and will likely return to 2003 levels before the pace of decline will moderate, the agency said.

“Should economic conditions become much worse than expected, home prices would decline more than Fitch’s projection and price stabilization would be delayed,” noted Huxley Somerville, Group Managing Director and U.S. Residential Mortgage Backed Securities Group head at Fitch. “Higher mortgage rates and tighter underwriting also will continue to put downward pressure on prices.” Appraisal Institute Frank Lucco, SRA, of Houston, stated, “I’m glad people are realizing that home price stabilization is not going to be a 90-day fix. More and more experts are referencing 2010 and beyond, which makes much more sense.”

According to Suzanne Mistretta, Senior Director at Fitch, “Government programs such as the U.S. Treasury’s Trouble Asset Relief Program and expanded mandates for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Housing Administration to increase loan purchases and originations may facilitate liquidity in the housing markets, which could have a positive impact on prices.”

Fitch Ratings is a leading global rating agency providing the world's credit markets with independent, prospective credit opinions.

No Drastic Increase found for Mobile Foreclosure Properties

Please check out our latest Active Rain Blog post - http://activerain.com/blogsview/766287/Mobile-AL-Bank-Owned-ListingsSales-for-2008.

We have looked at bank owned properties listed and sold in Mobile County since the beginning of the year. So far, we have not seen a drastic increase in the number of foreclosure listings. In fact, currently only 3% of the current active listings are Bank Owned Properties.

We will continue to monitor this situation,

:: C.A.R.E. in Barrie has done us all proud ::

A couple years ago, Barrie was still very unaware of the intricacies of, and the environmental impacts associated with ethanol production.

A few residents came together on learning of plans to construct an Ethanol Plant inside of Barrie's borders less than one kilometer from schools, parks and residential subdivisions. They brought with them the right mix of foresight concern and civic duty to investigate the dangers in overlapping the buffer zones of ethanol plants and populated regions and they shared their still expanding knowledge and concerns with the people of Barrie.

Along with opening my and many thousands of Barrie residents’ eyes, their shared awareness enlightened Barrie City council, our current MP, a former MPP and our local media while helping to hone the positions and responsibilities of the ministry of the environment.This group’s efforts should go down in the municipal history books as having contributed to saving our city from permanent stigma and a course change that would have stifled our vital tourism industry and stripped Barrie of a proud reputation as being a save clean place to live.

Those few individuals, who rallied volunteers together for a cause and became known as CARE in Barrie, gave us the confidence to believe that yes, you can (and you should) challenge government and big business when the cause is just.

They can hold their heads high and Barrie can be grateful we have such dedicated citizens in our midst.

The 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge is on

Online advertising is an increasingly important part of Australian businesses' marketing mix.

In 2008, we launched an Online Marketing Challenge to give students the chance to experiment with the medium and empower small local businesses to harness the power of the web to attract more customers.

The response to last year’s Challenge was so overwhelming that we decided to make this an annual competition. Giving students direct experience of online marketing whilst they are studying is a great way for Universities to provide students with direct practical skills they can use on graduation. Whether they find a job in marketing, accounting or retail, or set up their own business, graduates can all benefit from understanding online marketing.

The 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge is now open. It's a global online marketing competition that is open to any higher education institution, anywhere in the world. To find out more or to register your team, visit the 2009 Challenge website.

1650 different teams across 47 different countries took part in 2008, pitting their wits against one another to further develop and maximise returns for real world local businesses' online marketing strategies.

Using free $200 vouchers to spend on Google AdWords, each student proposes and implements a campaign for their chosen local business, makes tweaks and then final recommendations at the conclusion of a three week competition period.

Full details on 2008’s winning teams and finalists can be seen here.

Last year, a team from the University of Western Australia was the global winner. We're hoping Australia can go back-to-back this year!

Recently, the 2008 Asia Pacific regional winners – from the Australian Graduate School of Management, and two regional finalists – The National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences (Taiwan) and The National Taiwan University – visited Google's headquarters in Sydney for the Regional Finalists' retreat. For many students, it was their first visit to Australia and a chance to compare approaches, discuss strategies with online marketing optimizers at Google and gain some insights prior to the 2009 Challenge.

For us at Google, it was immensely gratifying to meet these students and hear them speak of the enthusiasm and benefit they received from competing. In fact, one of our winners had to leave early for a job interview, and it was fantastic to hear that his Challenge experience is helping him in his quest to find a job!

We hope lots of Australian students from across different academic disciplines will get involved in 2009. Good luck!

Posted by Will Blott, University Programs Manager

For All Those with Thick Hair

image credit massugu.be

Thinning shears(or thinning scissors as I like to call them) should be used to thin out your hair. I suggest Massugu thinning scissors as these scissors have been designed specifically with the beginning hairdresser in mind. These are simply gap-toothed scissors that cut only half the hair. These also come with various gap sizes, depending on what you need cut away.

I've seen how many people struggle with thick hair and I can just imagine the pain it is to manage it, hope this helps.

Barrie Real Estate

Is now a good time to buy?

I have been telling everyone the best thing that could happen to the real estate market in Canada right now would be for our cable companies to stop carrying CNN. We need a break from the panic mode doom and gloom financial health forecasts of economic prophets lined up around the block at CNN headquarters like it was the tryouts for American Nostradamus. My suggestion, watch a good movie. Back to you Wolfe.

A snap shot of our economy here on this side of the 49th shows inflation has dropped from August to September and continues to ease while some are predicting we are actually heading into a period of deflation. The central bank predicts inflation will hover around 1% for 2009. Gas prices which are at the core of inflation, have dropped from a their summer high of $1.37 just a few weeks ago and are now right around the dollar per litre mark, about where they were just over a year ago. The Canadian dollar has dropped to $0.80 US which should stimulate our export volumes and tempt more American tourists and shoppers to go north once again.

Interest rates keep falling and are still at historical lows right now however lenders have begun tightened the purse strings on higher risk borrowers this year. If your credit is good and the property appraises at or within your purchase price then you should not have problems securing a mortgage.

We are still in a general period of stifled growth economically and likely will remain in that shadow for a while yet due to global economic tension. This climate has caused many to hesitate on buying real estate and allowed listing inventory to accumulate this year to previously unseen levels. This presents opportunity for smart investors and savvy home buyers. Right now there are record numbers of properties listed for sale in and around Barrie.

Many of those sellers have been listed longer than they hoped to be and are looking to negotiate. Some will have found the home they want to buy and made offers conditional on their own sale. The clock on their conditional offer is counting down. This happens more frequently in a slow turnover market. Some are finding they are in deeper than they can or want to handle financially with increased energy costs and wish to downsize or cash out of the market altogether for a while. The problem for those in that situation today is it can take a few more months than they are prepared for to close a sale and this puts pressure on them to take the offer presented to them now over chancing the odds of a better offer down the road.

My advice would be turn off the TV and start watching the real estate papers for some of the deals that are out there.

Aussie Scholars visit Grace Hopper Conference

1500 women technologists in one room: this is the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing! As one of a number of Google Australia Anita Borg scholars, I was sent to this year’s GHC as part of the scholarship. Held in Keystone, Colorado, nestled in the beautiful Rocky Mountains at an elevation of about 9300 feet (just less than 3000m), GHC participants are urged to drink plenty of water to ward off altitude sickness; but, feeling woozy and out of breath from simply walking up stairs doesn't deter me from jumping headfirst into the networking, technical, and career development sessions!

GHC was unlike any other technical conference that I have been to before. With only a handful of men present (quite the opposite of a typical engineering conference), participants were a range of ages and from different technical backgrounds - be they students, academics or industry professionals (or all of the above!). The sessions covered a wide variety of professional development and technical topics, from petaflop computing to projects helping the developing world. Also, social activities and networking were as integral to the conference schedule as the technical sessions.

Universities and industry, invited to hold stalls at the conference, lined the foyer with information about graduate programs, internships and job opportunities; not to the mention the plethora of freebies including T-shirts, pens, water bottles, notebooks, bags, lip gloss, Rubik's cubes and rubber duckies (holding laptops, no less!). Armed with only a backpack, I ended up having to return a few of the freebies as they just wouldn't fit!

GHC gave me the chance to share experiences and ideas with other Google scholars (from the US, Latin America, and Canada), undergraduate and graduate students, academics and women from the computer technology industry - including Googlers! It was a really motivating experience to be in a room with so many like-minded women who share a passion for technology; from just one of the keynotes I walked away inspired and amazed by how much one woman had achieved with the OLPC project!

My thanks to Google for the scholarship which made my first trip to the US possible, and without which I might not have heard about GHC. I've taken home with me the importance of having mentors and a strong support network, ideas and opportunities for after study (a second PhD!), inspiration for innovative technology that can help change the world, and the knowledge that there is always more than one path to achieve what you really want.



Guest post by Eva Cheng, 2007 Google Australia Anita Borg Scholar, University of Wollongong

My Maps Australia Awards 2008

Local knowledge is a great thing. It can be the difference between an OK visit and a great visit to a particular destination. Today, we launch the My Maps Australia Awards for 2008, and are asking you to share your special knowledge of a corner (or corners) of Australia with the rest of us. 

What is a My Map? It is a personalised version of a Google Map you can create, complete with customised pins, text, pictures, video and more. Many Australians are already using My Maps for invitations, or to share information with friends or the world at large. We have a couple of celebrity guest My Maps created for this initiative to help illustrate some of the things you can do. These include:

Favourite surf beaches in Australia: Mick Fanning, 2007 ASP World Title holder
Famous gardens in Sydney: Jamie Durie, Horticulturalist, landscape designer, TV Host
Best coffee in Melbourne: David Makin, Australian Barista of the Year
Famous grave sites: Helen Harris OAM, Professional historian

Ten winners will receive "Best My Maps Awards" and one of these will win the grand prize of a 13" 2.1 GHz Macbook and eternal Australian mapping fame. They'll be judged on three criteria of creativity, originality and ease of use.

Entries close November 28, so take part and enter your submission now.



Posted by Julian Sonego, Marketing Team

SSAB Announces Expansion

The Swedish steel manufacturer SSAB announced plans today to expand their steel mill in Axis located in north Mobile county. The plant currently employs 400 and with the expansion that number should grow to around 600 employees.

The expansion announcement comes almost a year after German steel manufacturer Thyssen Krupp announced plans to built a large manufacturing facility a little further north on Highway 43 in the community of Calvert.

With these two facilities and other business nearby, we envision development and growth to occur in North Mobile County along the Highway 158 corridor towards the Schillinger Road extension. This would include the towns of Saraland, Semmes, and Wilmer.

Here is the press release from SSAB - Press Release.

Here is link to local story - WKRG TV SSAB story

Happy birthday, Sydney Opera House!

You may have noticed the doodle of the Sydney Opera House on our homepage today. Joern Utzon's famous creation is instantly recognised by millions worldwide as an Australian cultural icon and one of our most famous landmarks.


View Larger Map

It's 35 years today since Queen Elizabeth II opened the iconic building, so we thought we'd send our birthday wishes!


Posted by Michael Fox, AdWords Account Manager

Design Interior Modern Living Room

Your living room is one of the most important rooms in the entire house, and most of the people spend a lot of time in their living room. The decor of your living room can set the tone for your entire house. If your style is contemporary, then modern sofas, recliners, Plasma or LCD TV stands and entertainment units are an introduction to the rest of the contemporary space in your home.

The living room is the place of first introduction to your guest in your home. In simple terms, the living room is the focal point of a home, and a place that will bring comfort and joy to all of its inhabitants. So, how to create an impression of modernization living room? The idea is to come up with contemporary designs but still patterned to your taste and personality.

1. Focus to the modern living room design

To create your living room as a modern design it doesn't mean that you should be spend more money to buy new items, Simply you only need to create them to be modern look. With simple designs, you can easily come up with modern living room designs.

You can use lighting accessories, such as vanity strips and ornament lights. These items will serve as accent lighting and will emphasize or draw attention to your furniture even if they are not brand new. The idea is to blend modern lighting and not-so modern furniture and demonstrate what modern living room designs are all about.

2. Put some of accessorize

Design interior modern living room is does not necessarily mean buying updated furniture, modern style. Some of modern home accessories can help you to create your living room look as modern design, These items are much cheaper than the brand new fixtures and furniture.

The important thing is you should know about how the modern living room looks like. This would mean using accessories that are elegant, shiny, and patterned in subdued colors such as silver, grey, or black.

3. Choose the color scheme

In order to make your living room looks as modern design, You need to choose the color scheme. Modern homes are usually painted in sleek colors, such as black, white, and silver.

Hence, it is best to stick to basic colors so as to reflect contemporary look. Design interior modern living room for paints are also focused on using matte or flat paint finish. Try to avoid the glossy or shiny paint finish. For the walls, you can stick with the white color and enhance them with modern accessories such as paintings or modern day murals.

4. Create an abstract design

Now days, Many people are patterned their living room in abstract designs. Hence, incorporating these things in modern living room designs will definitely bring contemporary look in your area.

Home accessories such as clocks, picture scenery are can help you to set them create a modern interior design on your living room. Abstract designs provide a playful interpretation on the perception of different things.

NAR Mobile AL Metro Market Report

Every housing market is unique. The National Association of Realtors has created Local Market Reports (LMRs) for 153 of the largest metropolitan areas of the country. The Local Market Reports reflect data available through September 2008 and provide insights into the fundamentals and direction of the nation's largest metropolitan housing and real estate markets. Each downloadable report evaluates a number of factors affecting home prices, including:

• The health of the local job market
• Foreclosure rates
• Housing inventory
• Debt-to-income and mortgage-servicing-costs-to-income ratios

We have downloaded the report for Mobile and will be happy to send you a copy. If interested, please send us an e-mail and request free Mobile AL Metro Market Report.

From across the ditch: YouTube and the NZ election

Last night, more than one million New Zealanders watched the groundbreaking ONE News YouTube Election Debate when it aired on New Zealand's TV1 last night.

New Zealanders got their first chance to see current leaders battle it out head-to-head in their first debate leading up to the November 8 poll.

The ONE News YouTube debate enabled New Zealanders to put their questions to the two party leaders, Prime Minister Helen Clark and Opposition Leader John Key, in the leadup to the 2008 New Zealand election. What made this debate particularly special was that New Zealand citizens were called upon to ask the questions via YouTube and they did so enthusiastically, submitting over 100 questions. The debate marked the first time a head of a national government and the challenger for the top job have appeared in an official live televised debate answering questions posted as video questions through YouTube.

The full-length debate is now accessible worldwide through the YouTube debate homepage. Expat Kiwis can keep up with the New Zealand election happenings with our iGoogle gadget.

13 New Zealanders had their questions put to the candidates during last night's debate, including:

• 16-year-old Carmen McDougal from Pukekohe, who asked what will the parties do to help low and middle-income families to get through the recession.
• Ex-pat Kiwi Adrian Parker, who asked from London what the parties would do to reduce tax rates to bring them in line with Australia and the UK.
• Amberley resident Mike Jowsey, who questioned if climate change was for real and if so, who was causing it.
• Praveen from Auckland, who asked what plans there are to ensure shopkeepers are able to protect themselves from violent crime.

Last night was just one example of how YouTube and online video are changing politics around the world. In the 2007 Australian election, the main Australian political parties all established YouTube channels to engage with voters. Since then, Victorian Premier John Brumby has set up an official YouTube channel and many more of our leaders and politicians are realising the importance of online video and direct engagement.

Posted by Julian Sonego

Historical Pullman House Tour

This weekend is the 35th Annual Pullman House Tour

In the 1880's George Pullman built an industrial town for his railroad company employees on the western shore of Lake Calumet. The village is now part of Chicago and is located 13 miles south of the "loop". Architect Solon S. Beman designed approximately 1,000 residences and public buildings.

Pullman is full of historic and architecturally significant buildings, including the Hotel Florence, the Arcade Building destroyed in the 1920s, the Clock Tower and Factory, the Market Square and Greenstone Church. By 1972 the Pullman Historic District had obtained National, State, and City landmark status.

Seven homes will be included in this weekend's housewalk. Tickets are $20.00 and the walk starts at the Historic Pullman Visitors Center. October 11th & 12th -11 to 5 p.m.

Visit the Historical Pullman Foundation at http://www.pullmanil.org/

Monthy Real Estate Statistics for Mobile and Baldwin County Posted

The monthly analysis of real estate statistics from sold homes in Mobile and Baldwin County have been tabulated and posted on our Active Rain Blog.

The activity in Mobile is suprisely better than one would think. The number of sales rose slightly in September from the number of sales in August. The median sales price of a home has increased 10% in the past year.

There was a drop in both number of sales and the median sales price in Baldwin County.

Please click here to view details. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Spring Grove Subdivision - Great Home at Great Price

Please check out our new listing in West Mobile. Here are the details -

A Google Code Jam Story - Aussie Style

There is nothing like starting off the week with a coding competition - especially when the prize one lucky Aussie will be receiving is a trip to Mountain View, California, to compete for a share of $80,000.

Google Code Jam was created as a 20%-time project by a team of Google engineers. The contest aims to bring together the best and the brightest programmers from across the globe to solve complex algorithmic challenges, similar to brainteasers, in a limited amount of time. Coding is the process of converting information into coded values (typically numeric) for the purpose of data storage, management and analysis. The competitors create codes to solve each of the problems.

2008 marks the first year we've held semifinals in this competition, bringing top coders from across the region together to meet and compete. The contestants were selected after a series of online rounds, with each round consisting of a mini-code jam competition, and were given the chance to face off in Sydney as well as in Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. 100 finalists will then go to the Googleplex in Mountain View to compete for glory and a cut of the $80,000 in prize money on offer.

The Sydney regional Google Code Jam competition was held last Monday morning at our Sydney offices. The 21 contestants, representing eight countries played a few games of pool to fend off some pre-competition jitters and then got down to competition.

As a spectator in a coder's world, you could almost see the gears turning in their heads. As the competition progressed, the scoreboard, with competitors' nicknames, gave real-time updates. In Sydney we saw 'Microsoft' get on the scoreboard first, then 'snguyen', then 'Patience'. After an hour 'TripleM' made an appearance and continued to fight his way up the scoreboard. After two hours, time was called.

A few minutes later, results were posted. In the end, TripleM - real name, Stephen Merriman - had coded his way to trip to the Googleplex, to compete in the final round. Well done and do us proud!







Posted by Lysandra Sapp, People Programs

New Listing - Great Investment Opportunity

Please give us a call about our new listing in west Mobile. The home for sale is located in the Hamilton Bridges subdivision near all of the amenities in the Schillinger Road / Airport Boulevard area. The home is 1 year new, has brick front, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and 2 car garage. Priced to sell at $147,000. Virtual tour and other information is available on our website.

Newest Listing in Foley

Please give us a call to set up your personal tour of our latest listing. This great home is located close to the beaches, restaurants, and shopping. It shows pride of ownership with the manicured lawns and flower beds, painted and decorated front porch, warm colors throughout, and much more. The home has a wonderful floor plan with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. The master and secondary bedrooms are split to give the owner privacy. There is a bonus room that can be used as a den, children's retreat, home office, exercise or hobby room. Give us a call and let us tell you more about the home.

More eye candy for iGoogle

In case you're looking for some more personality to add to your iGoogle page, we've just unveiled a fresh collection of iGoogle artist themes in Australia -- an ongoing project we launched in April for which we invited world-class artists to design dynamic themes for your iGoogle homepage.

The new collection features designs from 28 leading artists from the worlds of fashion and music, such as top fashion designers Anna Sui, BCBGMAXAZRIA, Burberry, Gucci, Havaianas, Jimmy Choo, kate spade, Paul Frank, Vera Wang and many more -- and from musicians like Keith Urban, Radiohead, and Bob Dylan. So depending on what you're interested in, there's lots of great art to choose from to suit your personality, taste or mood.









We hope this new collection of themes gives you more choices so your iGoogle page reflects your personal style. Changing it is easy and requires only a few clicks. If you have a hard time selecting just one, add the sampler theme, which displays a different artist every day.

Stay tuned as we continue to collaborate with more artists from Australia and from around the world.

Posted by Julian Sonego, Consumer Marketing Manager

PRICE REDUCTION - Lake front home for sale in Foley.

Check out this great home at a bargain price. Please call us if you have any questions.

Diving into the Great Barrier Reef

Australia is home to many geographical treasures, and the Great Barrier Reef has to be one of my favourites. There's a magnitude, a depth, and a diversity of marine life that just leaves me in awe of this ecosystem that stretches more than 2,500 kilometres along the Queensland coast -- from Bundaberg up to Cape York.

You can now use Google Maps to find and explore the largest reef system in the world. Through close collaboration with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, we now provide map data and updated satellite imagery of the islands, reefs, cays, and rocks in Google Maps.

You can plan holiday travels, scope out your dives, engage your students, and visualise the reef with greater interactivity. Of course you can also overlay your own information on the reef system and share with family, friends, or the world.

It's also my hope that in line with the goals of the International Year of the Reef 2008, the addition of the Great Barrier Reef to Google Maps will help strengthen awareness, improve understanding, and generate action to help conserve our international treasure.

If you're lucky enough to have visited the reef, enjoy reliving your memories. If you've not yet been, happy discovering.



Posted by Raul Vera, Head of Geo Products, Google Australia