Mike Drews

Aurora Farmers Market West 2009

Farmers Market West will be held Wednesdays, July 8th through August 26th from 2 to 6 pm at West Aurora Plaza near the Blockbuster on West Galena Boulevard.

There you'll find Wiltse Farm, Norway Farms, Blue Freedom Farm, Wolf Farms, Garcia's Flowers, Curds & Whey, Sycamore Winery, Homemade Gourmet and Pampered Chef, as well as hand-crafted benches, bird houses and more.

Provena Mercy staff will be available weekly for free screenings and diabetes risk assessments.

Location: West Aurora Plaza near the Blockbuster on West Galena Boulevard, Aurora, Illinois

http://www.aurora-il.org/

Aurora, Illinois. What ever happened to common courtesies from Realtor to Realtor? Why can't we return phone calls, emails, tweets or whatever? Why do we have to chase other Realtors 2-3-4 times to get information from them?

I don't think this is just Realtor to Realtor, but also Realtor to Consumer. Had a friend over the 4th in Florida looking for property, she made several calls to Realtors about their listings and could not get anyone to return a phone call. I thought business was bad in Florida, most of us would be jumping at an inquiry on one of our lisitngs.

Aurora, Illinois. I was in a multiple offer situation in the last couple of days. The offer was submitted on Tuesday morning and the listing agent said we will probably have a response by Wednesday. Wednesday morning about 11 a.m. I saw it on ConnectMLS Hotsheet as a contingency. The way ConncectMLS is set up I knew the contract did not belong to my buyer. I immediately called the listing agent, no answer, just voicemail, so I left a message. About 10 minutes later my buyer called because they had seen it on Realtor.com as a contigency. I finally caught up with the listing agent about 4pm after a couple of messages on his voicemail. My only question was why he couldn't have called me and told me the other offer was accepted. His response "I was busy".

We need to restore the spirit of cooperation and cooperate.

Aurora, Illinois. Since August 2008, Mainstreet Organization of REALTORS has been tracking the number of houses going under contract/contract pendings on a monthly basis. These were some informative numbers that we hadn't had before. The only tracking information up until that point was the number of closed transactions, average salesprice and the median sales prices.

The tracking of contract pendings gave MORe and our members a better picture of what was happening in the marketplace. The number of pending transactions has steadily increased and were on the positive side since August 08'. The disturbing numbers in conjunction with that was the fact that the number of closed transactions were still on the negative side. That meant that homes were getting contracts on them but were't getting to the closing table.

In Aurora, Illinois there are probably a gagillion reasons why this was happening from financing issues to appraisals to job losses to unforeseen problems that arise from home inspections. Maybe, just maybe the playing field is leveling out and some of the problems are disappearing so we can get the contract pendings to the closing table.

For the first time in maybe 18-24 months we have very positive numbers. Contract pendings for June 09 vs. June 08 are up an astonishing 40.8%. Out of the 125 communities we look at, 112 communities had a greater number of transactions for June 09 versus June 08. Even better is the fact that our number of closed transactions for June 09 is up 1% over the number of closed properties for June 08. Soooo, maybe the tide has finally turned.