The booming Chicago-area housing market has one sector underperforming the rest: condos, according to data from the Illinois Realtors Association.
March home sales in the nine-county region were above average but below March 2021, Crain’s reported. March 2021 was the height of the pandemic real estate market.
Within Chicago city limits, 2,287 homes sold this March, the data show. That’s down 3.7 percent from March 2021. Comparing this March with the five previous years’ March sales, sales are up 26 percent.
In March, home sales in the nine-county metro area totaled 9,865. That’s a decrease from last year of 10.3 percent. Comparing this March with the five previous years’ March sales numbers, they are up 11.1 percent in the entire metro.
The city’s condo market appears to be a drag on prices. According to the data, the median price of homes sold in Chicago in March was $345,000. That is unchanged from a year earlier. The stagnant prices are attributable to declining condo prices, according to Crain’s.
Condo sales are about two-thirds of all city homes sold in a month, so the performance of the condo market is important to the overall home sales data, according to Crains.
Condos also spend more time on the market, on average, than detached single-family homes. In the first three months of the year, Chicago houses sold after an average of 61 days on the market while condos sold in an average of 99 days.
[Crain’s] — Miranda Davis
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