Despite the fact that the Case Shiller Chicago area home price index has now registered 82 consecutive months of annual home price gains the graph below also tells a rather sad story. The rate of our home price appreciation has been falling now for several years and today’s release of the August Case Shiller home price indices contained more sobering information. The Chicago area’s year over year single family home appreciation hit a 46 month low of only 1.4%. But the area’s condo appreciation was the slowest that it’s been ever since Chicagoland home prices started gaining again.
The slowing home price appreciation story is shared by the entire country. The average appreciation across the country remained at 3.2% but the 10 city composite dropped a bit more – to 1.5% from 1.6% in July. And, shockingly, home prices actually declined in the San Francisco area by 0.1%. With 4 of the 20 metro areas actually growing slower than the Chicago area we maintained our bragging rights to being in the top 80%.
Case Shiller Chicago Area Home Price Index By Month
The graph below shows the actual Case Shiller Chicago area index values by month along with a red trendline which I established based upon pre-bubble single family home price appreciation. As you can see there is a strong seasonal pattern that needs to be kept in mind when interpreting the monthly values. August single family home prices were up 0.1% from July while condo prices fell 0.2%.
We’re still quite a way from regaining the bubble high ground. Single family home prices fall short of that high watermark by 12.8% while condo prices fall short by 6.4%. The fact that condo prices are ahead of single family home prices in gaining back their losses may explain why condo prices are slowing down more than single family home prices now.
Just to give you an idea of the lingering effects of the housing bubble in the Chicago area…single family home prices are still lower than they were during the entire period from October 2004 – September 2008 while condos are lower than they were from July 2005 – October 2008. And just to remind you…October 2004 was 15 years ago.
When you compare home prices to where they could have been had they just continued on their pre-bubble path the story is even more depressing. Single family home prices are lagging that line by 25.9%. But at least we’ve made a lot of progress from the depths of housing crash with single family home prices up 43.1% and condo prices up 54.9%.
#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.