Business briefing: Local Realtors moving to new home

The home of the Realtor Association of Southwestern Illinois is moving.

The local Realtor organization has closed its offices at 3515 North Belt West in Belleville and is moving to 1124 Hartman Lane in Shiloh, where the association will reopen Monday morning.

Joe Hardin, a broker with the Barber Murphy Group in Shiloh who represented RASI in the sale, said the Realtor association has been looking for a more centralized location for its offices.

The association was formed in 1918 and today has more than 700 members serving home buyers and sellers in St. Clair, Monroe, Randolph and Clinton counties.

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Applications for jobless benefits have dropped and remain below 300,000, a level that has not been seen in 42 years. The number of Americans filing for unemployment fell by 11,000 last week to 264,000. Read more here.

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There are more than 165,000 apps available to help consumers find healthy options or monitor a medical condition, but only three dozen account for about half of all downloads. A new report from IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics cites most of these apps focus on fitness or wellness by helping the user count calories or track steps walked. Researchers also found that more physicians are using apps to help patients, but there is still a lack of research and limited data protection. Find out more here.

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The price of crude oil has fallen in early trading Thursday. U.S. benchmark crude is down 54 cents to $46.61 per barrel while brent crude, a benchmark for international oils, has fallen 76 cents to $48.99 per barrel. Learn more here.

-Will Buss, BND business writer

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 9:47 AM with the headline "Business briefing: Local Realtors moving to new home."