With residential real estate foreclosures increasing across the suburbs, officials in DuPage County are turning to a new pilot program to help families navigate complex court proceedings — and possibly save their homes. The effort in Judge Robert Gibson?s courtroom matches struggling homeowners with counselors from the DuPage Homeownership Center. The nonprofit group educates the homeowners

Cynthia Faullin of One Main Development holds a schematic showing leased spaces in M2 in Champaign. * * * The phones are ringing again. Demand for office space

When Fernando Molina left central Mexico to move to Illinois, he was searching for affordable housing, job opportunities and established Hispanic neighborhoods with grocery stores, bakeries and clothing shops. He didn?t head for Chicago, a well-known magnet for Mexicans pondering the journey north. Instead, he settled in Aurora. ?It?s like Mexico inside the United States,? said Molina, 37, a soc

Chicago real estate brokerage firm Dream Town Realty launches Friday a week-long deal on Groupon, hoping to tap the popular social buying model to attract clients. Dream Town says it is the first company to offer a residential real estate deal through Groupon. The firm joins a list of businesses in diverse sectors experimenting with a group buying as a novel marketing strategy.

'); NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. private employers added 201,000 jobs in March, while February's figure was revised down slightly, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday. The data was largely in line with expectations. Economists surveyed by

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to kill President Barack Obama's signature program to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure, although the bill is unlikely to clear the Senate. A bill to terminate the program was approved on a 252-170 vote. It was the last in series of four measures brought forward by newly empowered House Republicans to en

Major banks may be forced to let severely delinquent homeowners sell their houses for less than the loan amounts owed as part of a broad settlement of federal and state investigations into botched foreclosure paperwork, according to government officials involved in the negotiations. The requirement to allow so-called short sales would be in addition to forcing mortgage servicers to red