The city and regional housing markets are getting whacked by the interest rate increases designed to tame a wild housing boom. But while the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike series has clearly put the brakes on the Chicago-area housing market, it hasn’t put it into a skid.
Three out of four markers of the sector’s vitality were weak in November, according to data released this morning by Illinois Realtors.
The lone strong point in this morning’s report is on home prices in the city. The median price of a home sold in Chicago in November was $305,000, an increase of 6.7% from the same time last year. That’s on top of November 2021’s report of 10.8% price growth from the year before.
It’s the biggest increase in home prices in the city since last November. In five of the intervening months, prices were flat or nearly so.
The city price increase is nearly double the nationwide figure. The National Association of Realtors reported separately today that the median price of homes sold across the country in November was up 3.5% from a year ago.
In the nine-county metropolitan area, the median price of homes sold in November was $295,000, an increase of 1.7% from the year before. It’s the smallest increase since May 2020 or, disregarding that month because it was near the start of the pandemic, the lowest since September 2019.
City sales are about 1 in 5 of the metro area’s sales. Thus, the metro-area figure is more indicative of where the housing market is overall.
The median price is the middle line on a list of all prices. It can be moved by increased buying at one end or the other. The luxury marketplace, where buyers aren’t so concerned about interest rates, has stayed strong. This could