Price Gains Continue Even As Wintry Weather, Shrinking Inventory Slowed January Home Sales in Metro Chicago Real Estate Market, RE/MAX Reports

CHICAGO, Feb. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Home prices in the seven-county metropolitan Chicago real estate market continued demonstrating upward momentum even as January's challenging weather and a further tightening in the supply of homes for sale helped slow the pace of sales, according to an analysis by RE/MAX.  Compared to the results for January 2013, the median sales price of all attached and detached homes rose 18 percent last month to $165,000, while the number of homes changing hands dipped 8 percent to 5,709 units.

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The average number of days those homes sold in January spent on the market before going under contact was 107, or 35 days less than a year earlier.  Meanwhile, the inventory of homes listed for sale continued to tighten, falling to 28,774 at the end of January.  That is down 1 percent from the prior month and 16 percent from January 2013.  The RE/MAX analysis is based on home-sale data gathered by MRED LLC, the regional multiple listing service.

Among the seven metro counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will, six saw the median home sales price rise in January.    

The median price rose 20 percent in Cook and Kane, 17 percent in DuPage, 16 percent in Lake, 14 percent in McHenry and 11 percent in Kendall.  In Will County the median price decreased less than 1 percent.  The median sales price in Chicago gained 28 percent. 

Transaction activity, on the other hand, fell in six of the metro counties and in Chicago.  Lake County was the exception, with 574 completed sales yielding an increase of 3 percent when compared to January of last year. 

The other January results were as follows: Cook, 3,265 units, down 10 percent; DuPage, 624 units, down 12 percent; Kane 402 units, down 7 percent; Kendall 103 units, down 33 percent; McHenry, 265 units, down 8 percent; Will, 473 units, down 2 percent, and Chicago, 1,385 units, down 9 percent.

Attached Homes

Both of the trends that characterized the housing market in January were strongest in the attached home segment.  The median sales price for attached homes in the metro area was $135,000, a 23 percent year-over-year increase, compared to 18 percent gains achieved by the total market.  At the same time, the number of attached homes sold totaled 2,066 units, which represented a 10 percent decline from January of last year, 2 percent more than the overall market.  Average market time was 100 days, down from 145 days in the prior January.

Detached Homes

Sales of detached homes in the seven-county area during January totaled 3,643 units, 7 percent fewer than in the same month last year.  The median sales price rose 16 percent to $181,500.  Average market time fell to 110 days from 140 days a year earlier.

RE/MAX has been the leader in the northern Illinois real estate market since 1989.  The RE/MAX Northern Illinois network, with headquarters in Elgin, Ill., consists of 2,000 sales associates and 100 individually owned and operated RE/MAX offices that provide a full range of residential and commercial brokerage services.  Its www.illinoisproperty.com provides comprehensive information about the network and about residential and commercial property for sale in the region.  The northern Illinois network is part of RE/MAX, LLC, a global real estate organization with 90,000+ sales associates in 90+ nations. 

SOURCE RE/MAX Northern Illinois

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