Chicago will have weakest housing market in US in 2019: report

It’s not even 2019 and Chicago’s residential real estate market is already bracing for a bad year.

Chicago will have the weakest housing market in the U.S. in 2019 with declines in the number of home sales and in median home price, according to a Realtor.com survey of 100 U.S. metro areas.

The estimate shows Chicago home sales numbers will fall 7.4 percent, while median sales price will be down 1.9 percent, according to Crain’s which first reported on the findings.

The numbers are more positive in Miami, Los Angeles and New York.

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach market is expected to see the number of home sales grow 3.3 percent, with home prices rising 5 percent. The housing market that had the brightest outlook, according to the survey, is in Lakeland/Winter Haven, Florida, with predicted home sales growth of 5 percent and price growth of 7.4 percent.

In Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, sales will grow 2.2 percent, while prices will increase 5.4 percent.

The New York metro area will experience a modest sales gain of 0.4 percent, with a bigger price growth of 3 percent. Realtor.com’s report noted that the survey was conducted before Amazon’s decision to move part of its HQ2 to Long Island City, which will likely affect those numbers.

For Chicago, slower population and employment growth compared to the rest of the country are hurting the local housing market, Crain’s reported. While the number of metro areas with critically low inventory of homes on the market is easing nationwide, that isn’t the case in Chicago. [Crain’s] — John O’Brien