I always tell my buyers and sellers not to pay too much attention to national news reports regarding the housing industry. That’s because those reports focus on the entire country, while my clients need only worry about their local markets.
To see what I mean, visit the Chicago Tribune’s Market Pulse Web site, which you can find here. The page lets you click on different Chicago neighborhoods to find their median housing prices and how they have changed during the last year. By doing this, you’ll discover that housing in Chicago has seen widely varying performances in the last year depending on the neighborhood.
For instance, in Logan Square, the median housing price has dropped 4.84 percent during the last year. On the Near West Side, the median price has dipped 1.97 percent during the same time.
It’s true that most Chicago neighborhoods did see their median housing price drop during the last year, something that is to be expected given the country’s long-running housing slump. But the city’s traditionally strong neighborhoods have bucked this trend and have seen their median housing prices rise during the last year, even as the struggles of the national industry worsened.
In Lincoln Park, for instance, the median housing price of $475,000 represents an increase of 4.4 percent from one year earlier. The news is even better in the Near North Side, where housing prices jumped 14.49 percent from one year earlier. The median housing price in this slice of the city, which includes the Gold Coast, River North and Old Town neighborhoods, now sits at $395,000. In Lincoln Square, one of the hottest neighborhoods in Chicago, the median housing price of $352,500 is 20.31 percent higher than it was one year ago.
The news is even better if you check how median prices have changed in the last five years. Do this, and you see that the vast majority of Chicago neighborhoods have seen the value of real estate appreciate during this time.
The lesson here is clear. Just because housing prices are stagnant or dropping in many parts of the country, doesn’t mean they’re doing the same here in Chicago. If you’re looking to buy in the city, rest assured that residential real estate here is still a top investment.
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