Freeze Frame

As Chicago's real-estate market began to experience the big chill, homeowners worried that this was the beginning of the next ice age. But as our annual house survey demonstrates, there were a few bright spots in a year that was more frustrating than desperate.

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THE DATA

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These charts were prepared using data supplied by the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI), which annually lists about 90 percent of the houses and condominiums put up for sale in the Chicago area. In addition to charting home prices in the 77 Chicago community areas recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau, we have also tracked sales in most towns in Cook, DuPage, and Lake counties where figures were available. For the outlying counties—Kane, McHenry, and Will—we have listed a number of representative towns. There are two anomalies: In Cook County, the town listed as Barrington on the chart also includes Barrington Hills, Deer Park, Lake Barrington, North Barrington, South Barrington, and Tower Lakes. In Lake County, the town listed as Round Lake also includes Round Lake Beach, Round Lake Heights, and Round Lake Park.

The first column of figures on each chart lists the average sale price for all the houses sold in each neighborhood or suburb from July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007. (Obviously, if only a handful of houses were sold in a particular community, the average sale price risks being unrepresentative.) Average sale prices for the Chicago suburbs are based upon the sale of single-family homes, what the MLSNI classifies as "detached" housing. For Chicago, where a sizable portion of the housing stock is composed of townhouses, condos, and lofts—"attached" housing—we have also included average sale prices and number of sales for attached homes during the same period.

The second column reports the average number of days that houses remained on the market before they were sold, which can be an indicator of an area's desirability. The third column lists the number of house sales within each community from July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007.

The fourth column reports the percentage of increase or decrease in average sale price since the 12-month period beginning July 1, 1993, and ending June 30, 1994, the earliest date for which the MLSNI has comprehensive data available for most of the city neighborhoods and suburbs.

In Albany Park, for example, the average sale price 13 years ago was $134,203; this past year, it was $388,926, an increase of 189.80 percent.

The fifth column represents the percentage of increase or decrease in average sale price since the 12-month period beginning July 1, 2005, and ending June 30, 2006. In Chicago, we list the percentages for detached homes only. The percentages of change in sale prices since June 30, 2006, for townhouses and condos in neighborhoods with sales of 100 or more attached homes are:

In some instances, where data was insufficient or unavailable, we have inserted the symbol "N/A" (not available, or not applicable). Specifically, for city neighborhoods and suburbs—such as Fuller Park and Bannockburn— that had fewer than ten house sales during the 2006-2007 time period, we have listed no percentage change since 1994 or 2006 because the available data provided an insufficient basis for comparison between past and present sales.

About the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois

Established in 1989, the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois is one of the largest multiple listing services in the world, with more than 90,000 active real-estate listings, two million off-market listings, nearly 500,000 photo files, and four million tax records for eight northern Illinois counties (the six counties in our article plus Grundy and Kendall counties). Owned by ten local real-estate associations and made up of 50,000 subscribers in the real-estate industry, MLSNI and its computerized database help real-estate agents and brokers better serve their clients, whether they are buying
or selling a home.

This article appears in the October 2007 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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