Luxury home sales pace slips in Chicagoland

Chicagoland’s luxury home market keeps cooling after the post-pandemic housing boom peaked around the end of last summer. 

By the end of June, 36 homes this year had sold for $4 million or more within the six-county Chicago metro area this year, down 51 percent from the same time last year, when 73 homes had sold at that price threshold, Crain’s reported.

This year’s sales are also less than in 2021, when 41 homes of $4 million or more were sold by the midyear point. However, 2023 has outperformed 2020 and 2019 so far, as 20 and 32 such transactions had occurred through the first six months of those years. It’s likely that the total number of $4 million-plus homes to trade hands this year will be on par with the pre-pandemic average of 51.5, barring an unexpected surge in demand and inventory.

Some experts believe numbers are down this year because many sellers, who maybe weren’t ready to sell, couldn’t resist the urge to test the market while the housing boom was in full force, as bidding wars became common encounters.

During 2021 and 2022, “there were a lot of opportunistic sellers that maybe weren’t originally planning to list (their) homes for sale, but when the prices and the market went crazy at the high end during COVID, they sold earlier than they had intended to,” Engel & Völkers agent Jennifer Ames told the outlet.

Scarce housing inventory is another reason for the drop in sales. After the boom, there simply weren’t many homes left on the market. Plus, high interest rates and fears of a potential recession are causing many would-be buyers and sellers to wait until the market recovers.

The priciest home sales in Chicagoland this year include Ken Griffin’s $11.2 million sale of his Park Tower condo, and a Lincoln Park mansion that traded for $10.6 million in May. Outside the city, a record high was set for the west suburb of Elmhurst last month, when a buyer paid $4.2 million for a 9,815-square-foot estate.

Despite the notion that crime is steering prospective buyers away from Chicago, the seven most-expensive sales this year have all been within the city limits.

— Quinn Donoghue

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