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Chicago-area home prices keep going up. Here are four key takeaways.

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The aggressive price growth in the Chicago-area market lasted through the end of 2024, a group of monthly data reports show, and the few available signs indicate January will keep it going.

Welcome to this month’s roundup of data on the residential real estate market. Together, the reports coming in from all over indicate home prices are still rising faster in Chicago than in most of the U.S., although the number of homes sold keeps dragging.

Home prices here are widening their lead on the nation’s price growth.

In December, the median price of homes sold in Chicago was $345,000, up 11.3% from a year earlier, according to data released by Illinois Realtors on Jan. 24. In the nine-county metro area, the median price was $340,000, an increase of 11.1% from the same time a year earlier.

Nationwide, the median price of homes sold in December was up 6%, to $404,400, according to data released separately by the National Association of Realtors.

That is, Chicago-area home prices rose by better than five percentage points more than the nation’s prices.

The spread is larger than it was in our November data dive. At that time, city of Chicago prices grew by 4.6 percentage points more than the nation’s prices. Metro-area price growth was ahead of the nation by 3.6 percentage points.

The takeaway here is that price growth is markedly more vigorous in northeastern Illinois than nationwide.

Crain’s didn’t publish a data page like this one in late December because of the holiday schedule. The median price figures for that report, which would cover November are: Chicago (+12.4%), metro area (+8%), nation (+4.7%). Clearly, the differential between local and national price growth still has some legs in it.

Chicago is the second city of price growth.

Of the nation’s 20 largest cities, only New York had stronger price growth than Chicago in the latest report from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices.

Released today, the report covers November, not December like the Illinois Realtors data. It’s a more complex instrument that takes longer to process and arrives at slightly different conclusions.

In November, according to the index, Chicago-area home prices grew by 6.21%. It’s declining—down a little bit from the previous month’s 6.24% increase and significantly below the 8.9% hike reported for February, which was the high point for the year.

Yet it’s not dropping as fast here as nationwide. Nationally, according to the index, home prices were up 4.8% in November, compared with 3.6% the month before and 6.4% in February.

Compared with the peak growth month in February, Chicago-area home prices grew 2.7 percentage points slower and the nation’s grew 2.8 percentage points slower. Chicago has a slender margin, but the point remains that home price growth here is not decelerating as fast as in other parts of the country.

New York led price growth in November for the nation’s 20 biggest cities. Prices there were up 7.32%, or more than a full percentage point more than Chicago prices.

Home sales rallied in December but couldn’t lift the year-end total above 2023.

The number of home sales grew in December in both the city and the larger metro area.

In the city, 1,583 homes sold, an increase of 5.3% from the previous December and the strongest December sales tally since 2021.

Sales in the metro area grew by 7.5%, to 6,555. This, too, was the strongest December sales figure since 2021.

In both the city and the metro area, sales had posted strong gains in the previous two months as well.

Nevertheless, the fall sales rally couldn’t overcome the double-digit declines of some summer months. The result is that for the year 2024, sales were down, as Crain’s reported last week. The decline in the city was 1.6% from 2023 and in the metro area it was 1.3%.

The Illinois Realtors data uses the U.S. Census Bureau definition of the Chicago metro area, which comprises Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.

Early indicators show this year is shaping up to be more of the same.

Prices keep going up. In each of the first three full weeks of January, the median price of homes sold in the Chicago area posted hearty increases from the same time a year earlier. That’s according to weekly reports from Midwest Real Estate Data, the Chicago region’s multiple-listing service.

Two of them were in the double digits: the weeks ended Jan. 13 (+13.7%) and Jan. 20 (+12%). For the week ended Jan. 27, the increase was 9%.

But in that three-week period, the number of closed home sales was down 6% from the same period in 2024.

That’s an early indication that the low inventory of homes for sale and persistently elevated interest rates will keep holding the lid on sales volume.

By Dennis Rodkin
Dennis Rodkin is a senior reporter covering residential real estate for Crain’s Chicago Business. He joined Crain’s in 2014 and has been covering real estate in Chicago since 1991.
 

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