Chicago Home Prices Hit Lowest Level In 11 Years

It was all but certain that today’s release of the January Case Shiller home price index for Chicago was going to show continued declines and hit a new record low. And now that we have the numbers we can see just how bad it is – for sellers.
With an additional 1.9% decline for single family homes and a 2.6% drop for condos the Chicago market hit a record low in the last 11 years. The last time single family home prices were this low was January 2001 and condo prices are the lowest since February 2000. This is officially a quadruple dip.

Since the bubble burst in the fall of 2006 single family homes have lost almost 36% of their value while condos have lost almost 38%. At the bubble peak single family home prices were almost 36% above the red long term trend line in the graph above but now they are 28% below that trend line.
Furthermore, since May 2007 we have yet to see a year over year increase in either of the home price indices. For January single family home prices dropped 6.6% from the previous year while condo prices dropped 9.7%.

At least Chicago was in good company. 7 other cities out of the 20 tracked reported record low home prices.
Keep in mind that the index is still reporting on homes that went under contract all the way back in November. Since then we have seen record low inventory levels while demand seems to be picking up so when Case Shiller finally gets around to reporting on the current environment we could see a substantial increase in prices.
Also keep in mind that there are actually two (at least) different housing markets right now. There is the market for distressed properties in undesirable neighborhoods and then there is the market for non-distressed homes in highly desirable or upcoming neighborhoods and the latter market is not experiencing anywhere near the price declines of the former market. According to the CoreLogic January home price index report, in the Chicago area, single family home prices declined by 8.5% in the last year but if you exclude distressed sales from those numbers the decline is only 2.4%.
If you are interested we maintain a page of  on our Web site that contains this foreclosure data along with numerous other Chicago real estate market data all in one place. Actually, we maintain this page even if you are not interested.