Author: Tom Silva

One of the interesting drivers for new development may be the exchanges for futures and options which are seeing some consolidation.  A recent article in the March issue of Business Week Chicago profiles the acquisition of the Chicago Board of Trade by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to form CME Group — a blockbuster deal that […]

The current debate about spiralling fuel prices uses the price of gasoline at the pump as the belwether of energy prices. In the real estate industry, the energy metric commonly raised is electricity. But another spike is more striking: Diesel fuel prices soared 26.75 cents, or 7 percent, to an average $4.0630 per gallon from […]

With the current upheaval in the capital markets and the news that Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have written off $70 billion in loans, it is interesting to note a whole cadre of financial institutions that are doing gangbusters.  According to an article in the 2/19/08 USA Today, smaller banks which avoided the enticement […]

A recent report by Crain’s Real Estate Report (2/28/08) features a story about Schneider Logistics, an Evanston, IL-based company moving to downtown Chicago for one reason — the need to recruit young college graduates. According to Vice-president and General Manager Charles Craigmile, “it’s much better from a recruiting standpoint. Evanston is beautiful, but it’s tough […]

With all of the bad news about the housing market and the impact of sub-prime loans, its worth putting this in a historical context.  The U.S. mortgage market totals $12 trillion. Of that, $2.4 trillion is sub-prime loans.  Of this 20% of the debt will go bad — about $400 billion.  That equates to 3% […]