2014 Home Prices Jumped in Chicago Even as Sales Fell

Median home prices in the Chicago area beat their year-earlier comparison every month in 2014 but the same can't be said of home sales, which dropped in every month but one last year.

December capped that trend, showing a 3.7%, year-over-year decline in the number of existing single-family homes and condominiums sold, but a 4.2% uptick in median prices, according to data released Friday by the Illinois Association of Realtors.

In December, 7,971 homes were sold in the nine-county Chicago area at a median price of $184,000. Existing-home sales within the city of Chicago fell 6.8% in December from a year earlier while the median price of $229,250 was up 9.2% from December 2013.

Condominium sales in Chicago fell 7.3%, to 1,122 units sold at a median price of $275,000, up 1.9% from a year earlier.

Friday's report capped a challenging year for the local housing market, one in which real estate agents complained that the lack of inventory wasn't giving potential buyers enough choice. But that supply-demand inequity led to bidding wars on choice properties and drove up prices. On average, it took 60 days for a property to go under contract in 2014, compared with 68 days a year earlier.

In 2014, June was the only month in which the sales volume of homes sold in the Chicago area beat their year-earlier comparisons.

For the year, 104,379 homes were sold in the Chicago area, down 6.5% from 2013's sales volume of 111,672. The 2014 median price of $194,000, though, was 9.3% higher than in 2013.

Other than in 2013, last year's performance was the best since 2006, when 116,527 homes were sold in the Chicago area.

Jim Kinney, president of the Illinois Association of Realtors, called the year a turning point for the state's housing market.

"We saw strong and sustained median price gains and sales volumes remained healthy throughout the year," Kinney said in a statement. "The showing we had in 2014 sets the housing market up nicely for a strong start to 2015."

©2015 the Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency

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