Ways & Means

At the September 8th Bensenville City Council meeting the City Council repealed the onerous Home Improvement Ordinance. Bensenville homeowners no longer have to sign away their Fourth Amendment rights as part of an ill fated "Home Improvement" ordinance. The ordinance dangled a very attractive lo...

Clean water, climate change, natural disasters, and flood insurance are hot topics in the committee meeting this morning. Here is a quick synopsis of the discussion and why the issue is important to Realtors and homeowners. Clean Water Act. the short story here is a proposal to expand the federal...

Mainstreet Meets Congress FHA reform, flood insurance, Fannie/Freddie declining markets are only a few of the issues we discussed with Congress(wo)man Roskam and Biggert. Kudos to Pat Callan and John Veneris for leading our delegation and driving our lobbying effort. While Roskam had many questio...

Fighting Fannie/Freddie’s Declining Markets Policies MORe staff worked closely with NAR Financial Services Manager Jeff Lischer earlier this month urging an NAR response to several recent policies enacted by Fannie/Freddie. Policies which, when taken as a whole, are crippling our local marketplac...

"Yes, this is he" I said after getting up from the table to answer the phone. Another survey call and my wife is less than happy that I answered the phone. I politely decline to participate.The Do Not Call (DNC) Registry is again popping up in the news, causing confusion for REALTORS as well as t...

Can I be honest with you? Thanksgiving is usually a holiday of shame for me. (warning, long navel-gazing post ahead)Yes, I'm thankful for what I have, my children, my wife, and my comfortable life, but usually when I'm at the end of some long gripe or funk about something that has happened. My ow...

If you have worked on any sales in Westchester, Illinois, you already know what is going on. MORe has asked Advocacy to consider suing Westchester to fix an onerous inspection and what amounts to a $0 Transfer Tax.If you have a sale in Westchester right now, please contact me with the details if...

Talk to him or her.  It seems like common sense, but who has the time to talk to the politicians when these elections come up? By the time a normal person has time to focus on the election, they are standing in the voting booth. As a REALTOR®, you have us to help inform your decision. Here are a ...

New Babies, Worshipping a Rat, and 800 emails have what in common?Me,  Yes, I've been off line, non-blogging since my vacation, sue me, I indulged in a little "Dad" time.First, thank you to everyone in the State of Florida, especially the Realtors and Realtor Association staff who were so helpful...

 We had a fantastic presentation earlier today on how to handle hostile audiences. As you can imagine, being in politics can sometimes put you in front of a hostile audience. I recall going to a village meeting on a very basic property rights issue, transfer taxes and finding not only hostile vil...