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Chicago’s high-tech community wants to lure the area’s start-up companies back to 1871 — the year that the Chicago Fire burned the city to the ground.  1871 is the name of a 50,000 SF space on the Merchandise Mart’s 12th floor designed to house entrepreneurs seeking a collaborative and flexible work environment.  The name reflects […]

US banks are finally opening their purse strings according to The Federal Reserve’s quarterly senior loan officer survey. Who’s getting loans? Large companies, people with decent credit applying for auto loans or credit cards and also people buying homes. There are a number of reasons for why the banks are feeling more confident: less competition […]

All of Wall Street is abuzz about stock brokerage Knight Capital which was brought to the edge of bankruptcy by a software glitch. Seventeen-year old Knight is one of the most trusted trading intermediaries for many of America’s largest mutual-fund companies and retail brokers. It could have all ended when, on August 1st, a software […]

The country’s economy — still powering along at 7.6% GDP growth in the second quarter, even after a much-talked-about slowdown — and especially its gradual shift toward domestic consumption and a burgeoning e-commerce market, is fueling a long boom in the sector. China’s industrial sector has fallen to an 8-month low.  The Purchasing Managers’ Index […]

Here’s a little news to buck up the real estate mavens weathered by the daily diet of recessionary news: Google has signed the largest lease in downtown Chicago in 7 years. It is a familiar story – a marquee firm relocating downtown because of the hip, cosmopolitan appeal and amenities of a CBD — but […]

On June 29, Congress avoided doubling interest rates for new federal student loans. Republicans and Democrats came together to keep interest rates on new Stafford loans, which are subsidized by the federal government, at 3.4 percent. The rates were set to double in July. It’s good news not just for matriculating freshmen but also for […]

People who don’t follow the capital markets on a continuing basis might be forgiven for thinking that LIBOR was the name of a fitness instructor from Norway. But no, it’s actually what a lot of people in the business world, including those of us in real estate, look to benchmark the interest rates that we […]

Climate change isn’t new. A recent study found that it destroyed an ancient civilization approximately 4,000 years ago. The gradual eastward movement of monsoons across Asia at first supported the formation of the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley by allowing large-scale agricultural production, then wiped out the civilization as water supplies disappeared.  This the initial […]

International lenders and Greece will renegotiate the program on which the second financial bailout for Athens is based because the original has become outdated, according to a senior Eurozone official.  Greece received a €130-billion bailout in February from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  General elections in May and June delayed the […]

The percentage of borrowers who are behind on making mortgage payments fell to a four-year low in the first three months of 2012, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).  The percentage of loans that were delinquent or in the foreclosure process during the 1st quarter was 11.33 percent, the lowest level since 2008.  That […]