CHICAGO, March 8 /PRNewswire/ -- "'You must have the luck of the Irish. They accepted your offer.' That is what my realtor told me when I was bidding on my first house in March, 1988...the owners had accepted it on St. Patrick's Day. We put 20 percent down on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage, with no help from our parents...By the time we sold it in 1989, the economy had slipped into a growth recession - the economy was no longer growing rapidly enough to accommodate all the workers who were entering the labor force, and unemployment was rising. I was happy just to break even after realtor fees when the house finally sold," says Diane Swonk, chief economist of Mesirow Financial, in her annual housing market edition of Themes on the Economy, located at mesirowfinancial.com.

SOURCE Mesirow Financial