Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Foreclosures in the Chicago area this past May are showing a decrease in momentum, according to RealtyTrac, Inc., a California-based online data tracking service. 7,582 homes had a foreclosure or short sale related filing in May, dropping over 20 percent from the previous month of April and 49.7 percent from 2012 at the same time period. Foreclosure filings have been on the decline for the past four months, but Illinois maintains the sixth-highest foreclosure rate in the country, with one in 606 homes filing for foreclosure.
photo credit: doug.siefken via photopin cc
Chicago Real Estate Daily’s Alison Burdo indicates, “With one filing for every 500 homes, the city and surrounding suburbs dropped to the 26th-highest metro foreclosure rate in the U.S. The region, which includes 12 counties from northwestern Indiana to southern Wisconsin, had the 10th-highest rate in April.” In addition, Rockford, a northern Illinois city, had a 20.8 percent increase in home foreclosures along with the eighth-highest metro foreclosure rate in the U.S., offering one filing in 347 homes.
Real estate market trends show that shadow inventory also declined last month shrinking from 37,473 to 36,510 properties. The shadow inventory consists of bank owned single family homes, townhomes, condos or properties that are in danger of going into foreclosure.
Home sales for the city of Chicago were up 12 percent in April 2013 compared to March 2013, and up about 20 percent from one year ago. RealtyTrac Inc, indicates the median list price of a non-distressed home is at $175,000, up approximately 5 percent or $8,000 as compared to April 2012, with the median sales price at $220,000, up 3 percent from 2012. The average sales price of a foreclosure in Chicago was $145,000 or 64.3 percent, a slight uptick in price, of 2.2 percent versus April of last year.
Trulia indicates the most popular neighborhoods include the Near North Side, Lincoln Park, Loop, Uptown and DePaul. Lincoln Park and DePaul, subsequently cater to a larger number of the collegiate crowd due to the current and former students residing in the area. HGTV’s Front Door ranks some of the Chicago neighborhoods at http://www.frontdoor.com/places/10-great-neighborhoods-in-chicago. Some of the neighborhoods are up and coming, while others have held their ground (and value) over the past several decades.
Although the residential market has experienced a decreasing number of foreclosures, the sales of non-distressed homes have increased in number. Contract activity, an indicator of home sales, continues to trend upwards.
In addition, the local construction business has seen an upturn in residential and non-residential contracts. Projected to increase local construction volume by 7.4 percent by McGraw-Hill Construction, a New York based research firm, this estimate is in large part due to a strong push from the residential section, with contracts nearly doubling in the first quarter of 2013.
Development of single family homes and condominiums are picking up as well, but apartment construction is expected to top out at over 5,200 units in Chicago’s highly desirable downtown area. McGraw-Hill also estimates that construction for residential units will trend upwards close to 24 percent in 2013, to $2.9 billion.
