Existing home sales in July in the Chicago metro area fell 3.5% to 11,210 units, while the median sales price gained 4.2% to $250,000 as average market time for those homes fell to 66 days, RE/MAX Northern Illinois reported Friday.
“What’s most remarkable is that the July market time of 66 days is the lowest result for any month since 2005 when we began tracking that data,” said Jack Kreider, executive vice president and regional director of RE/MAX Northern Illinois.
“The inventory of homes for sale in metro Chicago tends to rise through the first half of the year, peak in July and then fall gradually,” Kreider explained. “At the end of July there were 34,478 homes for sale, which is 9.6% fewer than a year earlier and 18.2% less than in July 2015. Not surprisingly, that restrained the total number of sales although demand for homes remains strong. Compared to July 2015, sales were only 10% lower, while the median sales price was 9.7% higher and average market time was 13 days less.”
Another factor constraining sales is the shrinking number of distressed properties, a category including foreclosures and short sales. July saw only 847 distressed sales in the metro area, the lowest monthly total since January 2009, when the surge in distressed properties created by the Great Recession was just beginning.
The decline in inventory has been most pronounced in the detached home category where the number of listings at the end of July was 10.4% lower than a year earlier. In contrast, the inventory of attached homes was down only 7.4%, and attached sales rose 1.2% for the month.
