Archive for the 'Chicago Neighborhoods' Category
Single Buyers Becoming A More Significant Part of Home-Buying Market
March 3rd, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, Chicago Neighborhoods, Economic Recovery, For Buyers
First-time homebuyers have been given a lot of credit, including in this blog, for helping home sales rise in Chicago throughout much of 2009. But the Chicago Tribune, in a story on Sunday by Mary Ellen Podmolik, revealed that there’s another group of buyers that has done its share to boost the sale of local condominiums and single-family homes: single buyers, especially women.
According to the Tribune story, the number of unmarried single buyers has been on the rise since the Chicago housing market first began booming about seven years ago. Since then, there have been twice as many single female buyers as there have been single males.
The Tribune cites data from the National Association of REALTORS® that says that for the fiscal year ended in June, single buyers accounted for 38 percent of all home purchases in the Chicago area. And single women accounted for 26 percent of these sales.
In Chicago itself, not counting the suburbs, 44 percent of buyers for the 12 months ended in June were single, the REALTORS® association data said. Single females accounted for 29 percent of the condominium and single-family home sales in Chicago during the 12-month period.
That’s higher than the national average, where single women accounted for 21 percent of all home purchases. Nationally, single men accounted for just 10 percent of home sales.
These numbers don’t surprise me. After all, Chicago is a great place for singles of any gender to live. Every neighborhood in the city boasts its own character, and the trendiest, places like Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, and Lakeview are alive with high-end restaurants, independent theaters, hip shops and busy nightspots.
At the same time, housing in Chicago’s top neighborhoods is affordable today. The city’s average median sales price is down from last year, and down even more significantly from where it stood just three years ago. This means that single buyers suddenly have more sales power. Many of them can also take advantage (for the time being, at least) of the federal government’s first-time homebuyer tax credit of $8,000.
No, the fact that Chicago is attracting single buyers doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I’d be more surprised if the number of single buyers went down.
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High Percentage of Chicago-Area Home Sales Were Distressed Properties in 2009
March 1st, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, Chicago Neighborhoods, Economic Recovery, Foreclosures, Housing Market
The good news about 2009 is that housing sales began rising again in Chicago during much of the second half of the year. The bad news? A large portion of these home sales in the Chicago region last year were of the distressed variety.
A local real estate company reported that distressed properties accounted for at least 34 percent of home sales reported in the Chicago area in 2009.
This continues a trend that started in late 2007. And it’s not one unique to Chicago. As the nation’s economy began to falter, a growing number of homeowners lost their jobs or saw their annual incomes plummet. Many of these homeowners suddenly began struggling to make their mortgage payments for the first time in their lives.
In 2009, U.S. households received 2.8 million foreclosure filings, according to online real estate data company RealtyTrac. This figure represents an all-time high for the country.
It’s little surprise, then, that so many of the Chicago area’s housing sales last year were of foreclosed and distressed properties. Fortunately, there is help for homeowners who are struggling to pay their mortgage bills. The federal government in 2009 launched its Home Affordable Modification Program, which provides financial incentives to encourage mortgage lenders and banks to somehow lower the monthly mortgage payments of struggling homeowners.
If you are having difficulty making your mortgage payments, call your mortgage lender immediately. Even if your lender isn’t participating in the federal program, it might still be willing to modify your mortgage loan. After all, your lender does not benefit from seeing you lose your home to foreclosure.
I’m glad that home sales seem to be rising steadily these days. But I’ll be even happier when a much smaller percentage of these sales comes from distressed properties.
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Chicago Home Prices Down, But Not By Much
December 30th, 2009 categories: Chicago Info/News, Chicago Neighborhoods, Economic Recovery, For Buyers, For Homeowners, For Sellers, Housing Market
The story’s been the same throughout much of 2009 in Chicago: Average city housing prices are lower today than they were a year ago.
This didn’t change in November, according to the latest data released by the Illinois Association of REALTORS®. But in a bit of a silver lining, sales prices didn’t fall by all that much in the month.
The REALTORS® association reported that the median housing price in the city of Chicago for condominiums, single-family homes and townhomes stood at $215,000. That’s down 3.4 percent from the median sales price of $222,500 in the city one year earlier.
This isn’t the best of news for Chicago home sellers. After all, they’re trying to get the best prices for their homes. But the fact that the median sales price was down less than 4 percent is a good sign for the health of the local housing market.
The numbers tell me that housing prices in Chicago are finally reaching a stable point. Let’s face it, local home prices soared too high here during the height of the residential housing boom that ended in mid- to late-2006. These prices needed to fall. Of course, the process has been painful for home sellers and homeowners alike. Sellers are no longer able to name their price and then watch as buyers fight over their property. Owners are watching helplessly as their condos and single-family homes, even those in neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park, Lakeview and Lincoln Square, lose value. In fact, some studies suggest that about 15 million U.S. homeowners owe more on their mortgage loans than what their homes are worth.
But as painful as the process has been, it is an important one. There will come a day soon – hopefully in the coming year – when housing prices are no longer lower today than they were a year or two years ago. When that day arrives, we’ll know that housing prices have finally reached equilibrium.
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Chicago Near The Top In Obama Loan Modifications
December 18th, 2009 categories: Chicago Info/News, Chicago Neighborhoods, Economic Recovery, For Buyers, For Homeowners, For Sellers, Foreclosures, Housing Market
Ever since taking office, Pres. Obama has made slowing the rate of housing foreclosures one of his top priorities. This makes sense: Housing foreclosures drag down housing prices. They become neighborhood eyesores. And until the number of foreclosures falls to normal levels, the housing market won’t truly rebound.
That’s why the president and his administration worked together to create the Making Home Affordable program. The program encourages mortgage lenders, through financial incentives, to work with homeowners to keep them from losing their residences to foreclosure. Lenders will often modify the mortgage loans of homeowners who are struggling to make their payments each month. Modification may entail lowering the loan’s interest rate, stretching out its term or simply lowering the amount of principal owed. In each case, the homeowner’s monthly mortgage payment would go down.
According to a story in the Chicago Tribune, about 36,000 local homeowners have received some type of permanent or temporary loan modification as of the end of November. This ranks the Chicago area as one of the busiest sites of Obama’s loan-modification program goes.
Not everyone’s happy with the Obama program, though. Many critics point out that the program hasn’t been helping homeowners as quickly as the government pointed out. Many banks participating in the program haven’t modified nearly as many loans as government officials were hoping.
This is to be expected with any new program as complex as the loan-modification plan. Hopefully, the kinks will be worked out and more homeowners, in Chicago and nationally, will modify their mortgage loans. This is far better than letting these homeowners lose their homes to foreclosure.
And if the government doesn’t step in, that’s what will happen. A new report from First American CoreLogic proves it: This report, issued earlier this month, said that 9.41 percent of mortgage loans in the Chicago area were 90 days or more delinquent in October. This same rate stood at 5.02 percent just one year earlier.
I know many of you aren’t happy that the government is helping struggling homeowners. Yes, some of these homeowners did stretch themselves financially to get into homes that they could not afford. But many more are facing foreclosure because they lost their jobs or suffered a serious illness. This economic slump has shown us how easy it is to have the financial rug pulled out from under you. Simply put, I support any measure that slows the rate of housing foreclosures and in turn, help the market recover. This recovery benefits everybody in much the same way that foreclosure are a detriment to everybody.
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Reality TV Shows Love Chicago
December 7th, 2009 categories: Chicago Info/News, Chicago Neighborhoods, Chicago Real Estate News, For Buyers, For Sellers, Housing Market, Real Estate News, Real Estate Videos
If you watch enough episodes of House Hunters, Property Virgins, Sell This House and Property Ladder, you’re sure to see just about every hip neighborhood in Chicago. These shows, all “reality” house-hunting or –renovating shows on cable channels such as HGTV, TLC and A&E, frequently feature Chicagoans either searching for, selling or trying to transform their residences into a dream home.
How much, though, do these shows teach us about Chicago’s housing market? Not much. They may be called “reality” shows, but there isn’t much realistic about it.
Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Ellen Podmolik wrote about a local couple and real estate agent who will be featured on HGTV’s House Hunters on Dec. 10. In her column, Podmolik writes that both the agent and homebuyers soon discovered that there was precious little reality in the “reality” TV show.
The premise of House Hunters is that buyers look at three homes and then pick the one that they like best. There’s supposed to be some drama, too, in waiting to see if the couple actually qualifies for and gets the residence of their dreams.
Not surprisingly, as Podmolik writes, most of this drama is fake. For instance, in the episode airing this week, the couple looks at three residences in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. But the buyers had made up their minds on what home they were going to buy before the episode filmed. Of the three homes they looked at, one was already under contract to another buyer.
In the story, the agent working with the couple said that House Hunters doesn’t really teach viewers anything about what buying a home is really all about. I can vouch for that. For one thing, most buyers will look at far more than three houses or condominiums before finding the residence that’s right for them.
There is one important lesson, though, that shows like House Hunters can teach viewers: These shows do a good job cluing viewers in on how much residential real estate typically costs in a given neighborhood. For the House Hunters show airing this week, the three homes that the buyers looked at in Lakeview cost from $355,000 to $415,000. It’s an accurate representation of what these types of attached, single-family housing cost in this neighborhood.
Next time you’re watching one of the cable home shows, remember that not everything you’re seeing is real. Remember, too, that this is a good thing: Do you want to watch buyers look at 15 to 20 houses before making a decision? Didn’t think so.
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