Chicago Home Price Growth Ranks Among Nation’s Strongest

Chicago’s residential real estate market is proving that sustainability pays off.

While home prices soared at a record pace in multiple U.S. cities throughout the pandemic, Chicago’s remained relatively flat. So when spiking interest rates brought prices crashing down in markets where they had previously been climbing, the Chicago area became the second-best in the nation for home appreciation, even without a substantial change to its fundamentals as a market, Crain’s reported, citing data from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices.

The Chicago area’s 4.1 percent year-over-year increase in home price growth for April came in behind only Miami, where home prices were up 5.2 percent. The increase in Chicago continues to expand, reaching slightly more than the 4 percent jump recorded in March and 3.6 percent in February.

Some cities’ home prices plummeted since the post-pandemic housing boom peaked last summer. Phoenix, for example, experienced a 31 percent jump in prices in 2022 compared to the previous year, and now it’s down another 6.1 percent from last year.

Though Chicago’s single-family market never caught fire like other major cities, it’s been more resistant to volatile shifts. Thus, its home prices gradually climbed during a period of frenzied growth throughout much of the country.

Chicago home values appreciated more than the national average for the first time since 2016 in January, according to a year-over-year comparison of the measure. From 2018 to 2022, the Windy City consistently registered some of the lowest growth rates among major cities.

Nationwide, home prices fell by 0.2 percent in April, marking the first decrease since 2017. As of April 2022, prices were up 20.4 percent year-over-year.

While year-over-year numbers indicate steady growth among Chicago home values, month-to-month figures show that prices are on the decline. May marked the seventh straight month in which home prices fell in the Windy City, according to a study by Illinois Realtors. Albeit, that study focused on homes within the city limits, not the metro as a whole, as the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller report analyzed.

— Quinn Donoghue