After 8 straight months of declines single family home prices in Chicago finally bounced up according to the May Case Shiller home price index for Chicago just released a few minutes ago. In addition, condominium prices in Chicago also continued their upward bounce that started with the April release. This could very well be the beginning of the end of home price declines in Chicago – especially with Chicago home inventory at record low levels. Of course, I have declared the end of this spiral before.
Single family home prices were up 1.7% while condo prices were up 2.9%. You can see just where we have been in this saga in the graph below, which also contains a long term trend line in red for single family home prices. Right now we are almost 24% below the trend line.
Single family home prices are down 8.1% from last May – a slightly misleading number since last year at this time home prices were on the upswing. Condo prices are down 15.6% from last year.
Chicago single family home prices have still lost 33.6% of their peak value and are back to May 2001 levels while condos have lost almost 33% of their peak value and are back to July/August 2000 levels.
Last Chance To Enter Our Home Price Forecasting Contest
If you think you know where home prices are going you have only one month left to play our Chicago housing price forecast game for a chance to share a $500 prize with up to 2 other contestants. The contest is a consensus forecasting project and as of the time of this post the consensus is that Chicago home prices will fall an additional 4.6% by June. The contest will terminate with the release of the June Case Shiller index on August 30.
Dead (or mortally injured) cat bounce.