Up until the Chicago real estate market update for June there were signs on the horizon of the market slowing down but closings were still looking pretty good. We knew it couldn't last and, sure enough, the market cratered in July. Closings were down 25.9% from last year. Once again, that was the biggest drop in 2 years but, since the last 2 years were distorted by Covid culture, let's compare it to 2019. July was down 8.6% from then and, as  you can see in the graph below, it was also the lowest sales level in 10 years. In a couple of weeks the Illinois Association of Realtors will repor ..read more

Homes are currently a better investment than the stock market. At least that's the way it still looks based on this morning's S&P Dow Jones CoreLogic release of the May Case Shiller home price indices for the nation, including the Chicago area. The nation's home prices advanced 19.7% for the 12 month period. Although that's down slightly from April's 20.6% that's still very high considering that mortgage rates were already on the way up during that 3 month period for which the data is averaged. Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director at S&P DJI, is still saying that higher mortgage rates w ..read more

Late last week ATTOM released their Midyear 2022 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report which basically shows that the pandemic did not have any sort of lasting effect on the foreclosure market. In the graph below the first half of this year is almost identical to the first half of 2020 and 2020 was depressed by the foreclosure moratorium. [caption id="" width="910"] US foreclosure activity has returned to pre-pandemic levels[/caption] Yet, Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM, still seems to think that we're going up a bit further from here: "While overall foreclosure ..read more

I knew it was coming and it finally did. For a few months now Chicago home sales have been trending slightly downward but not dramatically. Sales remained at the top end of the historic range of the past 15 or so years. However, contract activity has been declining more significantly so it was inevitable that eventually closings would be hit harder than they had been. So it's no surprise that June closings were down 12.6% from last year. On the one hand that's the biggest year over year decline in 2 years but on the other hand last June was an all time record for closings. So there. Also, if y ..read more

S&P Dow Jones CoreLogic released the April Case Shiller home price indices for the Chicago area and the nation and there is still no sign of higher mortgage rates slowing down home price appreciation. But in all fairness the April data is really an average of the three months ending in April so it's a bit too soon to declare a non-event.  The nation's home prices advanced 20.4% over the prior 12 month period, which is only down slightly from the 20.6% number for March. The Chicago area continues to lag the rest of the country, coming in 2nd to last place among the 20 metro areas follo ..read more

I'd say it's been around 10 months since Chicago's foreclosure activity started to make a comeback but so far it's no worse than it was just before the pandemic hit. I'm looking at the ATTOM May Foreclosure Market Report released a couple of weeks ago. At the national level foreclosure activity was only up 1% from the previous month and Illinois and Chicago continue to rank among the top states and metro areas, respectively, for foreclosures. But Rich Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM, speculates that inflation may trigger higher foreclosure rates as people's bud ..read more

Unless you live under a rock (cheaper than buying a home) you've heard about how high mortgage rates have risen and you've heard the speculation that that might kill home prices. That last point is debatable for reasons I'll go into later. So I was really curious what the Pulsenomics and Zillow Q2 2022 Home Price Expectations Survey of over 100 real estate experts was going to show for the future of home prices across the nation. That came out last week and, surprisingly, their outlook is not that much different than it was last quarter. See the orange line in the graph below. In a nutshell th ..read more

It's still relatively early in this cycle of increasing mortgage rates but so far closings have not really been impacted. There's a bit more to this story below but, in the meantime, check out this graph and remember that last May set a blow out record for home sales. So when I tell you that this May's sales were down by 1.8% that's actually really impressive. It was up 14.0% from 2019 and it was the second highest sales in 16 years. This is one of those times when coming in second is nothing to frown about. As usual the Illinois Association of Realtors will report slightly weaker sales than m ..read more

So far there is no sign of higher mortgage rates depressing home prices. Chicago area single family home prices are still appreciating at the upper end of the recent historic range but it slowed down a bit since last month and we're still near the bottom of the pile, slipping down one more slot in the rankings. That is what this morning's release of the March Case Shiller indices from S&P Dow Jones CoreLogic tells us. The nation's single family home prices rose 20.6% in the last year, which is up from 20.0% last month. In contrast, Chicago area home prices only rose 13.0%, which is down fr ..read more

I've never been impressed with any of Illinois' politicians but Fritz Kaegi, the Cook County Assessor since 2018, is the exception to that rule. He inherited a seriously broken system from Joe Berrios and has completely turned it around. I believe the end result will be extremely good news for Chicago homeowners who need to note that this guy is on the primary ballot on June 28. Let me digress for a moment to address those of you who think I'm nuts for declaring good news for Chicago homeowners when you just saw your assessed value go up by...whatever percent. First, I'm going to ask you if th ..read more