Just last week I provided my monthly update on Chicago area home prices based on the Case Shiller index. As I pointed out Chicago hit a 7 year low in annual home price appreciation, slipping to second from the bottom of the 20 metro areas tracked in terms of this measure.
However, someone from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) just pointed out that they produce a similar home price index but with much broader geographic coverage. Depending upon the geographic level they produce either a monthly or a quarterly index. One of their data series are quarterly indices (I assume for both single family homes and condos/ townhomes) for the top 100 metro areas and guess what? Chicago home price growth over the last 12 months sucks even in comparison to much smaller cities, sitting in 95th place with only 1.6% growth vs. 4.9% for the entire country.
The graph below shows the cumulative price appreciation since the peak in the first quarter of 2007 for all 100 metro areas with Chicago flagged in red. Looks kinda ugly, doesn’t it? On this basis the Chicago area came in 92nd place during that period with a 5% cumulative loss. That compares to a 98% gain for the #1 Denver metro area and a 95% gain for the #2 Austin, Tx area!
Please note that the Case Shiller indices paint a slightly different picture of what’s happened to home prices in the Chicago area since the first quarter of 2007. According to those time series single family home prices have fallen 13% while condo prices have fallen 5%.
Of course, all this data is at the metro area level. What about just for the city of Chicago? Maybe that’s better because some of the Chicago suburbs are really hurting. Well, the FHFA also produces home price indices at the 3 digit zip code level and zip 606 is pretty darn close to the same thing as Chicago. Looking at the data at that level does produce a slightly better picture with the city appreciating 3.4% in the last year. However, it still registers almost a 4% drop since the first quarter of 2007.
Reading many different articles on this subject I can tell you that the recurring theme is that Chicago home prices aren’t going to go anywhere until we can resolve our considerable financial problems. The specter of continually rising property taxes is taking its toll on our housing market.
#CaseShiller #ChicagoHomePrices #HomePrices
Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.