Rockford home sales hit second-highest mark in eight-year recovery | The Rock River Times

 

Rockford Area Realtors sold 4,032 homes and condos in Winnebago, Boone and Ogle counties in 2014, the second-highest total since the 2007 housing bubble burst, which then sent the nation into a recession.

Rockford market sales were down 49 homes in 2014, just a 1.2 percent drop from 4,081 properties sold in 2013.

Steve Bois, CEO, Rockford Area Realtors, said the local market could have hit a higher total in 2014 than 2013, “except for the polar vortex and the especially harsh winter early in the year, which crippled sales in the first quarter.

“This was a year of gradual continuing recovery,” Bois continued, “which, in many respects, is a good thing. It was fueled by significant improvements in the economic fundamentals for most Americans and historically low mortgage rates.”

The 2014 Rockford housing market showed steady advances over 2013, with significant improvement in the following key housing metrics:

• Prices up — The three-month average rolling price finished the year with six straight months of year-to-year increases. August through December average rolling prices reached their highest levels in the last five years.

• Foreclosures considerably down — 2014 saw fewer foreclosures and short sales in the composition of Rockford market transactions, from a high of 55 percent of sales in January 2014 to a low of 20 percent in August. In total, seven of 12 months had foreclosure levels below 30 percent.

• Less time to sell a home — It took 5.41 months to sell a home in December, matching the same level reached in March. This was the lowest absorption rate since the average home sold in just five months in April 2007.

Three major factors excite and somewhat concern Realtors heading into 2015: inventory levels, the economy and mortgage rates.

The Rockford housing market ended the year with the lowest monthly inventory in 12 years. Inventory levels were at 1,818 in December, the lowest since November 2003.

“One concern is that the local housing market may not meet the demand forecasted due to regional industrial growth,” Bois remarked. “What happens when the announced expansions hit our region in the near future? We need inventory to help meet that demand.”

The improving economy will also play a major role in the local housing market in 2015.

Unemployment dropped to 5.6 percent in December with nearly 3 million jobs created in 2015, the best job performance since 1999.

“Economists are predicting the economy will come closer to full employment in 2015 and that average wages will finally start rising,” Bois said. “This would lead to more folks feeling secure enough in their job situations to become first-time homebuyers.”

Mortgage rates continue to be a major positive factor in spurring on sales (especially among first-time buyers), but may go up in 2015. The 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.66 percent for the week ending Jan. 15, down from 3.73 percent the previous week and 4.41 percent a year ago. This is the lowest level since the week ending May 23, 2013.

However, rate projections from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the National Association of Realtors and the Mortgage Banking Association predict a rise in the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to an average 4.28 percent in first quarter, 4.5 percent in second quarter, 4.78 percent in third quarter and 4.98 percent at year’s end.

“Interest rates will inch up,” Bois said, “but on the other hand, even if we end up at 4.5 percent, that is still a great interest rate.”

Bois said a significant housing development in 2014 was the growing understanding of housing as a major driver of the economic rebound.

“Congress has realized how critical all aspects of housing are to the overall health of the economy,” Bois said. “If the government takes any steps that affect housing this year, they should do so gingerly.”

Following are Rockford market home sales by year:

2014 — 4,032

2013 — 4,081

2012 — 3,815

2011 — 3,213

2010 — 3,341

2009 — 3,642

2008 — 3,978

2007 — 5,844

Posted Jan. 16, 2015

Rockford home sales hit second-highest mark in eight-year recovery | The Rock River Times

Piatak named Rockford Institute president | The Rock River Times

 

After several months of successful work as vice president, Thomas Piatak has been named president of The Rockford Institute by the Institute’s Board of Directors. Former President Thomas Fleming will continue to guide the Institute’s flagship publication as editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Piatak has been writing for Chronicles since 2001 and speaking at Institute functions on a variety of topics, including immigration, the sanctity of life, the importance of U.S. manufacturing, and conservative politics. Serving as vice president over the latter half of 2014, he raised the profile of Chronicles, building strong relationships with new donors and writers for the magazine — work that he will continue as he takes the Institute’s helm.

“The board is profoundly grateful to Thomas Fleming for his 17 years of exemplary service as president of The Rockford Institute, and for his continued devotion to our peerless magazine, which, under his tireless direction, has been the vanguard of conservatism,” said Rockford Institute Board Chairman Raymond Welder. “Though filling his shoes seems an impossible task, Thomas Piatak, we are confident, will prove a worthy successor.”

Piatak earned his bachelor’s degree from Case Western Reserve University, where he graduated summa cum laude with honors in history. He received his law degree from the University of Michigan, where he graduated cum laude. His wife, Valerie, serves as a finance director for a non-profit organization.

Piatak served as Pat Buchanan’s campaign chairman in Ohio during the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns and also served as the executive director of The American Cause, a non-profit organization of which Buchanan was chairman. In college, Piatak served as president of the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and student representative of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and in law school he was active in the Federalist Society and later headed the lawyers’ chapter of the Society in Cleveland.

Before joining the Institute, Piatak practiced labor and employment law in his hometown of Cleveland at Frantz Ward, whose labor and employment practice is ranked in the top tier by Chambers USA. Piatak has also been a partner at Arter & Hadden and Baker Hostetler.

Piatak is confident The Rockford Institute and its flagship monthly magazine and website are poised for significant growth and an expansion of the uniquely conservative influence that Chronicles has wielded for nearly 40 years.

“It is a great honor to succeed Thomas Fleming as president of The Rockford Institute,” said Piatak. “The Rockford Institute and Chronicles have remained true to their conservative principles. My goal is to make this excellent work known to a wider audience.”

Since 1976, The Rockford Institute has carried out its mission of defending and advancing “the principles of a free society.” Founded in the year of the nation’s bicentennial celebration, the Institute has worked to preserve the institutions of the Christian West: the family, the church, and the rule of law; private property, free enterprise, and moral discipline; high standards of learning, art and literature.

Posted Jan. 19, 2015

Piatak named Rockford Institute president | The Rock River Times

GOP divided over using budget process on health care law - Yahoo News

 

At issue is an arcane process known as budget reconciliation. It's the only filibuster-proof option available to Republicans, who control the Senate with 54 seats but must still muster 60 votes to pass other legislation.

Senate precedents limit the number of reconciliation bills — one for taxes, one for spending and one to raise the government's borrowing cap — and so a major debate has begun among Republicans over what to put in it.

Hard-line conservatives want to use the process to force a showdown with Obama over the law.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told a Heritage Foundation gathering of conservatives last week that Republicans should "use every procedural tool available, including reconciliation, to repeal Obamacare with 51 votes in the Senate."

That's a view shared by conservative groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund and Heritage Action, and prominent voices on the right like Erick Erickson, publisher of the Redstate.com conservative blog.

"It's time to stop pussy-footing around with excuses and half-assed attempts at partial repeal, and get serious," Erickson wrote last week. "Make Obama veto the repeal of his signature legislation."

Pragmatic voices in the GOP, however, say the certainty of an Obama veto effectively means that Republicans would be wasting the opportunity given them under special budget rules that limit debate and can guarantee delivery of legislation to Obama.

"I'd like to get tax reform done. I think we could do infrastructure in that process. And I think that's something that could actually get enacted," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce committee. "I mean we're going to have a lot of Obamacare votes one way or the other."

A reconciliation measure can only advance after the House and Senate have agreed upon a measure called a budget resolution, which sets broad parameters for spending, revenues and curbs to benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Democrats used reconciliation to help pass Obama's health care plan. And Bill Clinton and Republicans controlling Congress used it in 1997 to advance a balanced budget bill. Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich in 1995, tried to use it to pass a bitterly partisan 1995 balanced budget plan Clinton vetoed. Even though their budget resolution is likely to project a balanced federal ledger over the coming 10 years, Republicans are signaling they're not willing to do a party-line replay of their 1995 experience.

"The only way to do entitlement eligibility changes is on a bipartisan basis," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Thursday at a news conference at a GOP issues retreat in Hershey, Pa. "We do not intend to be offering unilateral, one party-only entitlement eligibility changes."

Republicans devoted a session at the retreat to the topic of reconciliation. A decision on what to do with it appears a ways off.

"At some point we'll decide if we're going to have reconciliation and if we do, we'll make some decision much later on," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters last week.

The view of some pragmatists is that reconciliation should be used to get a result that might get signed into law or as leverage to make Obama more uncomfortable than he would be in vetoing an Obamacare repeal measure. And some lawmakers think that an upcoming Supreme Court ruling could unravel much of the law, making them wary of wasting reconciliation on the health care law.

"It should be things like that that actually improve the long-term fiscal stability of the country and maybe provide us some revenues for things where we can agree, like infrastructure," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.

A telling episode last fall illustrates the passion over the issue.

McConnell told Fox News that repealing Obama's health care plan would "take 60 votes in the Senate .... and it would take a presidential signature." This sparked a mini-eruption on the right that prompted McConnell's office to release a statement promising to use budget reconciliation to repeal the law.

GOP divided over using budget process on health care law - Yahoo News