New year, same hot luxury residential market in Chicago

Chicago’s luxury residential market is off to a strong start to the year.

The Jan. 24 sale of recently retired Boeing Chief Financial Officer Greg Smith’s home for just over $4 million marks the seventh Chicago-area home to sell for at least that price, according to Crain’s. It came after 101 houses selling for at least that price last year, almost double the 51 that hit that mark in 2019.

Smith and his wife, Denise Matthews-Smith, bought their seven-bedroom home on Starr Lane in Winnetka for $3.55 million in 2014. Smith, who retired in July after a 30-year career with the aerospace company, served as interim CEO after Boeing fired Dennis Muilenberg in 2019 after two 737 Max planes crashed, killing 346.

Single-family home values rose 11.6% in November from the year-earlier month, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices report cited by Crain’s. That continues a streak of double digit increases that started in June. It’s the third-longest such streak dating back to the 1980s. The longest ended in August 2006.

The figures show how much low interest rates and pandemic-era shifts in housing needs have bolstered the market. In the 12 months before the onset of the pandemic, Chicago-area home prices never rose more than 2 percent in a month. In the preceding five months, the increase was less than 1 percent, according to Crain’s.

Nationwide, home prices rose 18.8% in November, after four months when the figure was over 19%. The series of double-digit increases kicked in earlier nationwide than in Chicago, Crain’s reported.

Chicago’s price growth remained near the bottom of the list of major U.S. metropolitan areas, where it has been for much of the past four years. Only in two of the top 20 biggest metro areas did prices rise more slowly than Chicago: Washington, D.C., at 11 percent and Minneapolis, at 11.2 percent.

[Crain’s] – Harrison Connery