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With the spring housing market around the corner, there are signs of a stabilizing housing market, according to the latest report released from the Illinois Association of REALTORS® (IAR) today. Statewide, the single family market saw median price gains in the first two months of the year compared to 2009 and 2010 levels.
At the same time, statewide total home sales in February rose 1.3% compared to the month before in January. Year-over-year statewide sales were down 10%. Here are more observations from the most recent report.
Statewide
- Single family median price up 1.6% from February 2010 and up 2.8% from February 2009
- More than half of counties reported median home sale price increases or no change
Chicago PMSA
(Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will counties)
- Home sales were down slightly (-2.0%) from the previous month
- Single family median price increases for Will (+0.3%), Cook (+3.4%) and Grundy (+11.6%).
City of Chicago
- February 2011 home sales up 2.1% from previous month
- Single family median price up 21.9%
In a housing market forecast prepared for IAR, University of Illinois economist Dr. Geoffrey J.D. Hewings said: “Sales are forecast to decline year-over-year for the next three months but this is not an extremely negative signal for Illinois and the Chicago PMSA housing markets taking into consideration that the early 2010 housing market was inflated by the homebuyer tax credit by 16.5 percent. This impact is reflected in the fact that we are expecting to see significant month-to-month sales increases for the next three months for both Illinois and the Chicago PMSA.”
