If you’re debating whether it’s time to become a homeowner, you should know one thing: Housing is currently a great value in the city of Chicago.
Housing prices are dipping across the city, including in some of its top neighborhoods. This means that buyers today can buy more home for their dollars than they’ve been able to for years.
The numbers from the Illinois Association of REALTORS® back me up. According to the association, the median price for a home – including single-family residences, condominiums and co-ops – stood at $222,500 in November. That’s down 23.3 percent from November of last year, when the median price hit $290,000.
These numbers aren’t unusual. The median sale price for a home across the nation stood at $181,300 in November of last year. That’s a drop of 13.2 percent from the median price of $208,000 one year prior.
At the same time, homes aren’t selling as quickly. Home sales in the city of Chicago for November of 2008 were down 41.3 percent to 1,057 sales. In the same month one year earlier, home sales came in at 1,801. This slowdown has left a glut of homes on the market, meaning that buyers not only are paying less for homes in Chicago today, but they have more properties from which to choose.
Don’t expect, though, to steal a home. Sellers may be eager to move their properties, but they still won’t react well to an offer that’s insultingly low. That’s where the value of an experienced REALTOR® comes in. A REALTOR® can help you make a good, solid offer, one that is fair for the property on which you’re bidding.
It’s difficult to get excited about the residential housing market with all the gloom and doom you see on the news. But take a look at the prices out there and you’ll see the truth: If you’re in the market to buy a home, this is a great time to act.
Downsizing has become one of the hottest trends in residential real estate. Clients are calling me on a regular basis telling me that they’re interested in moving into smaller homes. They want to sell their larger properties and move into homes that they say are warmer, more suited to today’s smaller families. By moving into a smaller home, one that requires less maintenance and has less outside area to care for, homeowners can set themselves up quite nicely for their retirement years; As long as they stay in relatively good health, they may not have to move again for a long time.
Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Umberger wrote about this trend in last Sunday’s paper. She, too, has received calls from real estate pros saying that the trend toward smaller homes has become a strong one.
That’s good news for anyone hoping to move into or sell a home in one of Chicago’s more established neighborhoods, places like the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, Bucktown or Lakeview. These neighborhoods already boast the type of smaller residences that people are looking for.
And even newly built single-family homes are often of the infill variety, filling in sometimes tight spaces between already standing buildings. There rarely is enough room in Chicago’s older North Side neighborhoods for the type of sprawling McMansions that seem to be falling out of favor with a growing number of buyers.
So if you do live in a smaller home in one of these neighborhoods and you’re thinking of selling take this news as a good sign. You have a commodity that people want. That can only help you get a fair price.
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW PROPERTIES NOT YET ON THE MARKET.
After weeks of talk and speculation, the U.S. House of Representatives last week finally proposed a bill to help stimulate the country’s housing market. Here’s hoping that the measure has more of an impact than we’ve seen so far from the previously passed $700 billion federal bailout program.
The new proposal, which you can read about here, would require the U.S. Treasury Department to make affordable mortgage loans available for qualified buyers. The Treasury Department would accomplish this through interest-rate buy-downs, with the hope that this move would inspire more buyers to leave the sidelines and make offers on homes.
The proposal would also amend portions of the federal government’s previous bailout, known officially as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, to help reduce the number of foreclosures.
Will this new proposal, if it is eventually voted into law, help end the nation’s housing slump? No one has a definitive answer to that question, but I can’t help but think that help from the federal government can’t hurt.
The housing industry is so important to the country’s economy. It’s no coincidence that the recession followed so closely on the heels of the housing industry slowdown. Anything anyone can do to help get the housing market on track – whether it’s the federal government, state agencies, industry powerhouses like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or individual real estate associations – is welcome.
Freshly inaugurated President Obama now holds the reigns of power and influence. Remember the excitement felt by so many when Obama won the election? Hopefully the nation can recapture some of it this month. The U.S. House’s stimulus proposal is at least a first step in this process.
The national credit crisis – lenders tightening their standards so severely that it’s a struggle for anyone to qualify for financing -- has certainly slowed any possible recovery of Chicago’s housing market. If you need more proof of this, just check out this story in Crain’s Chicago Business.
Two tenants have decded against moving into a pair of new office towers in downtown Chicago. Bridge Finance Group, which is based in Chicago, has dropped its plans to move into the top three levels of John Buck Co.’s tower at 155 N. Wacker Drive. Stockbridge Capital Partners LLC, a real estate investment firm based out of California, has closed its Chicago office and plans to sublease the floor it was supposed to move into at Hines Interests’ tower at 300 N. LaSalle St.
At first glance, this may seem to have little to do with residential real estate. But the open space in Chicago’s downtown towers is disconcerting. It just shows once again how tenuous our real estate market in general has become. During the early days of the nation’s housing slump, Chicago’s top neighborhoods were still holding their own. Some of them, of course, still are; Many homes in neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Lincoln Square and the Gold Coast are still not only holding their value, but appreciating.
Many other formerly strong neighborhoods, though, are seeing housing prices and sales continue to dip. For a while, the city’s commercial real estate sector was holding strong, too, even during the height of the general real estate slump. That, too, unfortunately, has changed. Commercial REALTORS® expect 2009 to be one dismal year.
I don’t bring all this up merely to ruin your day. But I do want the home sellers who are reading my blog to realize exactly what they’re up against when they put their homes on the market today. It is far more difficult to sell a residence in today’s market than it was even three months ago.
That’s why I recommend that sellers work with a knowledgeable REALTOR® who can help them set the right price and market their home extensively. To do anything less is a big mistake in today’s challenging real estate market.
The Chicago Tribune has been running a series of outstanding feature stories focusing on Chicago’s history of segregation. You can read the latest of these stories here. The main point, though, is a sad one: Chicago is known as one of the most segregated cities in the country, with different races and ethnic groups rarely living amongst one another.
There is some good news, though: This is changing. Yes, it’s changing slowly, but it’s still changing, nonetheless.
In many of the neighborhoods where I help residents buy and sell homes, segregation is already less of an issue than it is in other city communities. For instance, look at the neighborhood of Lincoln Square, one of the trendiest communities in the city. According to the Chicago Tribune, the neighborhood has a diverse mix of races, with 66.9 percent of the population here white and 26.5 percent Spanish. An additional 13.5 percent is Asian, with 3.3 percent African-American.
In Wicker Park, 58.2 percent of residents are white, while 46.9 percent are Hispanic and 9.9 percent are African-American. And in Bucktown, 65.1 percent of the population is Hispanic and 48.4 percent white.
Of course, segregation remains a serious issue throughout most of the city, especially so between white homeowners and African-American homeowners. You just don’t see too many neighborhoods – with the exception of, perhaps, the Beverly and Morgan Park neighborhoods on the city’s South Side – where there is a fairly equal population of white and African-American homeowners.
Hopefully, though, the gradual change we’ve seen throughout the city will only intensify. There was a lot of positive talk regarding race relations during incoming president Barack Obama’s historic campaign this year. Let’s hope that all that wasn’t just talk. Let’s hope that true diversity finally does come to Chicago’s neighborhoods.
Mario Greco is the #2 full-service residential real estate agent in Chicago. He has sold over $575 million in Chicago real estate since 2002, and leads a group of 8 agents and 9 office personnel.
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