Anyone in the American Bottom who has a mortgage from a federally regulated or insured lender and that mortgage is secured by a building will have to buy flood insurance a year from now, if things stay on track.
   And that insurance may nearly quadruple over current rates.
   In August 2007, the Federal Emergency Management Agency notified area leaders that the American Bottom was being remapped for flood risk. The expectation at that time was that the levees protecting the area would be decertified, and the entire area would fall into a high-risk zone.
   “There are plenty of high-hazard zones already shown in the three Metro East counties behind the levees,” said David Schein, regional flood insurance liaison for FEMA’s Region 5. “The issue

   According to a housing price forecast created by the University of Illinois’ Regional Economics Application Laboratory, Illinois saw housing sales decline overall between 22 percent and 26 percent during the second quarter of 2008, compared to the same time last year, with median prices expected to trend downward through September at a rate of 5 percent to 6 percent per month.
   No matter what side of the real estate industry you’re on or what numbers you pull, there’s no two ways about it; the current residential real estate market is a tough one.
   Such statistics lead to the one question