House Buying Incentives - From the City of Chicago

The City of Chicago is offering an incentive to home buyers in Chicago that you might want to take advantage of -call me for information:

CHICAGO TO HOME BUYERS - FIND YOUR PLACE
By Susan Diesenhouse
Chicago Tribune reporter
September 5, 2008

The city is launching a campaign to lure skittish home buyers off the sidelines to purchase $150,000 to $450,000 homes in which the city has an investment."Everything is slowing down," Mayor Richard Daley said at a press conference Thursday announcing the Find Your Place in Chicago program. "You don't want [city-assisted development] to stall."

The program will use a combination of price reductions, down-payment assistance and financial aid provided by the non-profit Partnership for New Communities, Harris Bank and private developers. Many developers are offering sales incentives that they will continue rather than finance new ones.The city, while not putting in any new money, has organized the effort and is launching a marketing campaign to publicize existing city tax credits and price-reduction programs. The goal is to sell about 200 homes in 26 neighborhoods.

Much of the financial aid will go to buyers of about 100 homes at former public housing project sites being redeveloped through the Chicago Housing Authority's Plan for Transformation. The city already provides help for those buying homes in projects being developed with help from the Department of Housing.All of the homes in the program have been built with city assistance, such as low-cost land sales, land leases, direct financial subsidies and federal or state tax credits funneled through the city. "We want Chicagoans to know that we have affordably priced housing in vibrant neighborhoods across the city and that this is a good time to buy," housing commissioner Ellen Sahli said.

If the program can jump-start sales, it will help keep alive the Plan for Transformation, a public-private effort to create mixed-income enclaves on once-troubled public housing project sites, said Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the single largest contributor of new funds for the mayor's sales effort.The foundation ponied up half of the $1 million in the Partnership for New Communities fund to give a $10,000 discount to the first 100 buyers of units in seven Plan for Transformation developments. For those sales, Harris Bank will cover up to $1,500 in closing costs on fixed-rate mortgages, Sahli said.Parkside at Old Town, which has closed on the sale of 60 of the 270 units in Phase I, could be a beneficiary since it put 30 units into the pool of 100."We hope this will kick-start sales," Parkside development manager Allison McDonald said.Mitchell Newman, principal of Stratagem Builders LLC, will offer a month of free assessments for two basement condominiums at Lake Park Gateway II on the South Side, priced at $199,000 each. But he's wary about the program's prospects."Other city marketing efforts have had good intentions but not been that effective," Newman said. "Most of all, what we really need is a database of qualified buyers that we can contact by e-mail."Visit FindYourPlaceInChicago .org or ThePartnershipForNew Communities.org for more information.sdiesenhouse@tribune.com

HOW TO DETERMINE YOUR BANKS FINANCIAL HEALTH:
A little digging will tell you whether it's a safe place for your cash

By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 7, 2008
How can you tell whether your bank is in hot water?More people have been asking that question since the collapse of Pasadena mortgage giant IndyMac Bank in July. After the government took over the bank, many customers had to wait in line for hours before they could speak to anyone about their deposits.

Sidney Eisenberg would like to avoid that inconvenience."Who wants to stand in line to do the paperwork, or find out because you didn't dot an 'i' or cross a 't' some bureaucrat doesn't want to give you your money? Life is too short to engage in any more hassles than necessary," said Eisenberg, 62, of Rowland Heights, whose investments include bank certificates of deposit as well as stocks and bonds.The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says that when a bank fails, most customers who are covered by deposit insurance don't lose access to their money at all. IndyMac customers who didn't want to stand in line at a branch were still always able to access their accounts online or at an ATM, the agency says.

But when it comes to money, some people don't want to take any chances. Even if you know that your account is 100% insured, you still may want to check on the soundness of your bank or credit union.Where do you start? Eisenberg, a retired General Motors executive, clicked on a "security" link on the website of his bank, Citibank, but found only "a bunch of trivial info about 'phishing' and online security scams."Regulators rate the soundness of financial institutions but don't disclose the resulting grades. Savvy consumers, however, can turn to ratings generated by private firms that wade through the oceans of numbers that banks report to regulators.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s website lists 11 firms that rate banks and thrifts and provide reports online, by mail or even over the phone. That information can be found at www.fdic.gov/bank /individual/bank/index.html.The firms generate their ratings by feeding data taken from the banks' quarterly reports to regulators into proprietary computer programs.Information on banks and thrifts that is made available includes net worth (also known as capital), problem loans, profit or losses, cash on hand and reserves for losses.Some of these services are expensive and oriented toward financial professionals.

But Bankrate Inc. and BauerFinancial Inc. give free access to their ratings on all 17,000 U.S. banks, savings and loans and credit unions. Most institutions get three or four stars, with five best.Veribanc issues twin ratings: one on the institution's current condition, plus a forecast of its prospects. The ratings for one bank or credit union cost $10; additional institutions are $5 apiece.The rating experts take pains to caution that a low rating does not signal that collapse is likely. Even the worst-off banks -- those on the FDIC's secret list of troubled institutions -- have failed only 13% of the time, the agency says. Most worked their way back to health.Comparing Bankrate's ratings with the website's data on CD interest rates, it's easy to see that many institutions offering high yields have few stars, leaving you to perform your own risk-reward analysis.In any case, if your bank gets low grades, check to make sure all your money is insured by the FDIC so that you at least won't lose any funds if the bank fails.

Basic FDIC insurance tops out at $100,000 per customer, but it is possible to insure many times that amount at a single institution by setting up joint accounts and trusts.To determine whether your deposits are fully insured, don't rely on the assurances of lower-level bank employees, said Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate."Do you really want to have as your financial advisor someone making $10 an hour on the other side of the teller window?" he said.

McBride advises visiting the FDIC's online Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator or contacting the FDIC call center at (877) 275-3342. For credit unions, the National Credit Union Administration’s website has a similar calculator at webapps.ncua.gov/ins.If you need to find another place to park some or all of your money, you can compare interest rates online at Bankrate. Also, each week BauerFinancial publishes a free list of money market and CD rates offered by banks and thrifts that get at least 3 1/2 stars. The list can be found at www.jumboratenews.com/btc_cdratewatch.asp.Eisenberg discovered that Bankrate gave Citibank three stars -- not awful but not great either.He doesn't really think the giant New York bank will ever fail, but nonetheless he withdrew about $100,000 that was uninsured at Citibank and socked it away in a CD at Union Bank of California."Why wouldn't you want absolute peace of mind if you're only earning 3 1/2 % or 4% on a CD?" he said. "At that return, you're not getting paid to run any risk at all."scott.reckard@latimes.com

MELLOW YELLOW - 1508 East 53rd Street 773-667-2000
Still the home for south side crepes - Mellow Yellow is still doing well. I ate there recently for breakfast, and their omlettes are great - just what you want after a long walk on the lakefront. The hash browns weren't what I expected, but they were passable. Don't miss their strawberry sundaes - now that Baskin Robbins is gone, that's all I have to look foward to. Check it out!


CAROLINE, OR CHANGE – The Court Theatre – September 11 – October 19-

DON'T MISS: The coins that 8-year-old Noah carelessly leaves behind in his pockets are more than just spare change to Caroline Thibodeax, an African American housekeeper working in a stifling basement laundry room in Louisiana in 1963. Blending blues, gospel, and traditional Jewish melodies in a breathtaking score, this deeply personal story from Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner (Angels in America) is drawn from the playwright’s own childhood. The vast social change taking place in 1960s America is the perfect backdrop for a powerful story that the New York Times proclaimed “an extraordinary new musical.” Chicago’s own E. Faye Butler will perform the title role.