North Shore Views

Home Prices on the Rise?

The National Association of Realtors just released the latest data on the housing market and the numbers are cause for cautious optimism.   Nationally, home sales rose almost 23% in April for the U.S. In Illinois sales grew 34% over last year. And in the Chicago area home sales jumped 47%.  (These numbers are for single family homes, condos and townhouses).

But  the improved affordability of homes has been a double-edged sword. Great for buyers, but horrifying for sellers as they watched their homes lose value month after month as home prices plunged  from  2006 highs. Now, finally,  prices seem to be starting to  turnaround. Nationally the median home price increased 4% over last April. Illinois home prices rose 5% and in Chicago the median price incresed 3.2%, the first annual increase in nearly two years, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors.  Good news for homeowners, finally.

But what about the North Shore? How did we fare? From a sales perspective, great. Things are moving again and we are even seeing multiple offer situations. Home sales were up a whopping 52%. vs. last April (which was the worst month on record for some North Shore communities). But here on the North Shore prices are not yet making a comeback. The median price for the North Shore overall was down 6% vs. last April. However, looking closer at the individual towns, the results are all over the board. Evanston, Northfield, Glenview and Winnetka were bright spots, while communities to the north (Glencoe, Highland Park and Lake Forest) did not fare so well:

Median Home Price Change (April 2010 vs. year ago)

Evanston   +8%

Wilmette   -16%

Glenview   +40%

Winnetka   +45%

Northfield   +51%

Glencoe   -80%

Highland Park   -99%

Lake Forest   -21%

A word of caution: one month does not a trend make. We will need a couple more months of data before we can draw any conclusions about where prices are headed on the North Shore. Stay tuned.

Tags: Home prices

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 8:41 am and is filed under North Shore market data, Real estate. 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.

1. Grant Hammond said at June 9th, 2010 at 5:14 pm

   Despite your word of caution, some of these swings seem huge. Is the volume exceedingly low?

2. Anne West said at June 9th, 2010 at 6:10 pm

   As a matter of fact, April 2009 was the worst month on record for some towns, like Winnetka, so, yes, we’re working from a low base when comparing to that.

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