Chicago Housing Bubble

What's the best month to sell a home in Chicago? Stop guessing.

This time of year, the #1 question I get asked is "What's the best time to list my property?" As Mary Umberger wrote in her Trib column the other day, the vague answer is: "don't wait too long".

But I prefer to use data to solve the mysteries of the housing market...

I shared some similar information last year. But now that 2009 has passed, we have the updated full-year numbers for single family homes AND condos. NOTE: These are CONTRACTS WRITTEN (not closings). I like measuring it this way, because it shows you the month in which buyers make the most decisions to purchase...

 

Not surprisingly, the SFH home market comes out a little later (on average) than the condo market. What I find interesting is that 2009's December numbers were the highest in at least 5 years! November was the highest in 3 years!

 

And these numbers are just nuts! The VERY FIRST thing that popped out at me as I was putting this together was that transactions went up every month from Jan-Jun. And Q4 of 2009 outpaced Q4 of 2008 by 81%.

Obviously, Q4 of 2008 was a disaster (stock market, election anxiety, job losses, that horrible Zack and Miri movie etc.), but it's important to note what happened in the later part of 2009's market. Could this be the bottom? We won't know until at least April of 2010. But so far - things are looking up...

Single family homes through 2009!

Single-family homes are a little less interesting and predictable than condos from a numbers perspective. This is due mainly to the fact they don't exist in large closing numbers. The turnaround time for families in a single-family home is longer. And they take up more overall space. This leads to fewer transactions on a yearly basis.

Regardless, it's nice to look at the data and spot some trends. You'll notice I pulled out some of the neighborhoods that aren't really "single family" neighborhoods. South Loop, Near North, and West Loop are missing on purpose. Uptown really should have been pulled as well.

First, the sales numbers...

The only notable thing I can spot is the Irving Park numbers having gone up 18% in 2009. What you can't see is that 46 of those 139 were short-sales, foreclosures or court-approved sales. So while the transactions were up 18% from the year before, if you take out the distressed properties, it was actually down 21%. More on distressed properties next week...

 

Prices get even weirder in the numbers (especially without digging into the number of bedrooms). From cutting data obsessively for the past 18 months in all the northside neighborhoods, I can say (with confidence) that if you bought a home in 2005, it's worth less today than it was then. The numbers in every neighborhood here reflect it. And hey - Uptownites - don't read too much into your neighborhood's "positive" numbers - 21 total sales is too small a sample to get an accurate read.

Meanwhile, my favorite head shaker is Lincoln Park. No matter how I cut the data, how far I go back, how many bedrooms I use - LINCOLN PARK single family homes will not quit! The Lincoln Park SFH market just keeps going in the right direction.

Post comments if you have them. Meanwhile, there's more to come this week and next.

Condo numbers through 2009!

DAMN! 5 full years of data to play with!!! I always say New Year's is my favorite holiday...

I'm going to post condo numbers today and single-family home numbers tomorrow. I have some other changes coming up on the blog too. But as I said yesterday, I'm not going to make any promises I can't keep. So I'll save those announcements for when I can actually deliver them.

On to the numbers...

We knew transactions were going to be down in 2009 from 2008. In fact, at halftime, we were predicting transactions in the condo market to be down as much as 43%. But then a little thing called the Obama Tax Credit (that's not the technical name) came along. And Q4 of 2009 turned the transactions on a dime. In fact, December of 2009 boasted almost TRIPLE the number of transactions (in our "watch" neighborhoods) as December of 2008. 

(P.S. I knew that credit would do something funny to the market, but that triple-December shit threw me for a loop.)

(P.P.S. Is it "threw" or "through"? I think it's "threw", but I'm not sure. I'm trying to stay focused on the numbers.)

Prices in the neighborhoods did what they were supposed to - they followed suit. If demand falls out of the market, prices naturally have to adjust (or people will simply stop buying homes). And since people didn't stop buying homes, prices made their adjustments.

There is some correlation here. The neighborhoods with big drops in sold listings also saw some of the biggest reductions in prices. In short - the South Loop got its ass kicked.

So what's up in 2010? With an overall reduction in transactions of 24%, that should translate to even lower prices in 2010. But it will take some numbers from all of Q1 to really see what's going to happen. And here's the wrench in the prediction engine - that credit was extended through 04/30/2010. So expect some craziness.

We'll keep our eye on it though.

How are prices doing?

OK, we're back in the game here. I have a bunch of stuff coming. First things first: How are prices doing?

As you might remember from my posts, I use 2 bed, 2 bath condos (for the condo market) to determine what's happening with prices. Why? Because 2/2's are a common sales point for entrance into the market. More of them sell than anything else, and with big numbers, you get accurate trending.

Here's what we have:

It doesn't come as any shock that we have prices being down from the peaks of the market. But the thing I'm paying attention to is where are from the previous year.

You can see that every neighborhood has seen a drop (except North Center) since 2008. So yes - if you bought last year, your condo is worth less today than it was a year ago. That means you lost money. That means the market won't pay the same amount you paid for the same place. Please read this paragraph back a few times.

Where is the bottom? This is what I'm trying to figure out. Next up: prices for single-family homes. Then transaction closings and contracts for both categories. After that I have some other nerdy analysis to share that I think you'll like. Really, I mean it this time - stay tuned.

Single family homes... recovering?

As usual, I've been wondering. Wondering about how many contracts are getting written out there in the market compared to previous years.

No one ever talks about contracts written. I like to call it the "decisions made" index.

These results are from the northside. For sake of speed, I didn't include Bucktown/Wicker Park as I normally would (I have to pull those separately and just didn't feel like it this time - get over it):

There's only one thing notable here - and it's a BIG NOTE - June and July "decisions made" are UP (UP?!) from 2008. I'll be keeping my eye on this.

The numbers at halftime (for condos)

Well, the market seems to be a little warmer than we predicted it would be back in January. I'll just get right to it - here are the condo closing numbers through June 30 (half of 2009).

Quick note: I never posted numbers through 06/15. The rolled up numbers are here...

Rolled-up demand is still down 43% from 2008. This continues to improve from the -55% we saw back in February and March. Clearly the year started off REALLY bad for home sellers. The big question is - if the market ends up down 40% from 2008, what will that do to prices? There's no way we should see anything other than falling prices through 2010. The market looks better than it did in the beginning of the year. But don't confuse that with a sign of recovery.

I like to make the update a little different every time. So this time, I'm going to include closing numbers by neighborhood on the north side. Remember - the 2009 numbers are the latest full-year projections for closings:

More fun on the way. I have numbers for single-family homes now too! Stay tuned...

Roscoe Village 2008 market results

Last week I talked about my favorite building in Roscoe Village - The Pencil Factory Lofts. Today I have the market stats for the whole neighborhood.

As Roscoe Village always seems like one of those neighborhoods where people would love to live, the market there is mostly flat (down modestly, but with small sample sizes). Not so surprisingly, condos are up 4%.

Email or leave a comment if you have any questions or comments about Roscoe Village (or anything else!

Pencil Factory Lofts

One of my favorite buildings in Chicago is 1800 W. Roscoe - the Pencil Factory Lofts. I just put another one of my listings under contract there (unit #314) and expect to list 3-4 more units there this year. I love this building because it was one of the first loft buildings on the northside. It's 140 units, 40 different floorplans, and the units have square footage unmatched by today's 1050 sqft "lofts".

The way I always describe 1800 Roscoe: "these were lofts before lofts became cookie-cutter, pre-fab, boring nightmares of living spaces." In real estate we do this thing called "farming" where you focus your energy on a building, area, subdivision, etc. and become "the" EXPERT. I've done that in this building. And I'm proud of it. The owners are all very nice, it's close to my house, and the building is unique and fun.

I also call this building the Honda of real estate - the units typically hold their value as compared to the rest of Roscoe Village and/or similiar units in Lakeview.

With that - here are 4 years of results in this amazing Chicago landmark.