Selling tobacco products will now require a license from the state.

Beginning January 1, any retailer selling cigarettes or any other tobacco product will need a $75 license. Besides allowing the state to catalog tobacco retailers, the goal is to punish businesses which sell these products to underage buyers.

Kathy Drea, lobbyist for the American Lung Association of Illinois said kids in every neighborhood know one retailer where they can go buy cigarettes. She said she hopes losing their license is big enough incentive to keep those retailers from selling to kids and continuing to do it year after year.

Most of the license fee will go to tracking down the smuggling and sale of contraband cigarettes.
Drea says about 4,000 businesses have already filed for the license with the Illinois Department of Revenue.

In other State news, the median price of a home in Illinois continues to go up in November, while the number of sales went down compared to last year.

9,640 homes were sold in November, down 3.5 percent from the same month in 2014. Prices, however, rose year-over-year for the 39th consecutive month, with the median price going up 6.5 percent to $165,000.

Illinois Association of Realtors president Mike Drews says the low inventory of homes is keeping prices up while forcing buyers to pick quickly.

Drew said that still remains the issue, so prices are kind of strong, buyers have fewer listings to take a look at and they’ve got to jump on it a little quicker than they’ve had to in the past few years.
The November report says homes are remaining on the market for an average of 67 days, down from an average of 74 days a year ago.