North Shore Views

Lake Forest Real Estate Trends

Lake Forest has had some of the most extreme changes over the past couple of years. Home sales (single family houses, condos and townhomes) have improved dramatically but have been accompanied by large decreases in average pricing. In fact, average prices for December of 2009 were about 50% of prices during the market’s peak, back in late 2007.

Lake Forest Home Sales

December sales showed a 29% jump from November and 100% from December of last year. Total year sales of 187 are 4.5% ahead of 2008. Consistent with other markets, Lake Forest had a weak 1st quarter after which sales rebounded and have held relatively steady since May.

Home Prices

The average sales price was $857,166 in December down 6% vs. November and down 27% vs. December 2008. Pricing in Lake Forest has been consistently trending downward from its high of $1,800,000 in late 2007. While other markets appear to be stabilizing, it’s not clear that Lake Forest prices have hit bottom yet.

Inventory and Months Supply

The total inventory of homes for sale as of December was 347, down 11% from November and down 8% from December of last year. This is the lowest level of inventory in Lake Forest since March 2007. Months supply, a measure of how long it would take to sell all of the inventory at the current rate of sale, was 15.8 months in December, its lowest since August 2007. Lower inventory and months supply should ultimately help bolster prices.

Market Time

The average days on market, which shows how many days a home is on the market before it sells, was 113 days as of December, down 3% vs. November and down 29% vs. December 2008. The combination of low prices and reduced supply is causing buyers to get off the fence and buy.

Read my 2010 outlook for North Shore real estate here.

Tags: Lake Forest, North Shore Chicago home sales trends, North Shore market data, North Shore real estate trends

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 8:15 am and is filed under Lake Forest, North Shore market data. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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