Chicago Real Estate Blog

Although the end of the year and the holidays typically marks a slow real estate season, the Chicagoland area saw its home sales rise at this time, helped by a strong surge in Chicago condo sales.

Helping drive demand was a remarkably low inventory for Chicago condos, townhomes and single-family homes. In fact, the year ended with only a 2.7 month supply of townhomes and condos and only a 3.7 month supply of single-family homes. 

Although low inventory is a sign of a strong housing market as it shows that buyers are acting swiftly and buying up homes and condos that are for sale, too low of an inventory can shift the market too far into a seller’s market. The good news is that inventory levels of Chicago condos and townhomes are expected to tick upward and already have trended in this direction as 2013 drew to a close.

“When the Illinois Association of Realtors reports on December home sales in about two weeks they are going to be talking about how great it was that home sales were up around 12.0 percent,” wrote Gary Lucido for the Chicago Now blog. “And in reality growth was actually up 14.7 percent when you compare the December snapshots taken at the same point in time during January. On the surface this will look impressive as it will be the 30th consecutive month with year over year increases in home sales and it will be a substantially higher increase than November's 2.5 percent growth over the previous year.”

Tags

• Chicago Condo Market Update (3)
• Chicago condo sales (2)