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The summer housing market in Chicago and Illinois saw month-to-month decreases in home sales in July and increases in August before declining in September, according to data from Illinois Realtors, a trade association for real estate agents. The same data shows median sales prices continued to decrease from July through September, with home prices still up year-over-year.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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I remember a year ago, I said a housing crash was coming. A commenter here said that I needed to be specific if I was making a prediction and I said, fine, a crash within a year or two. And the commenter didn’t believe it. Yet here we are. Home sales are the slowest since 2008! The 2008 home sales crash was basically armageddon in the residential real restate market and was the beginning of a five year real estate depression and home price crashes. And now they say that home prices are down 11%! That’s a huge drop in… Read more »
“And now they say that home prices are down 11%” Nope. Sales prices are not down 11%. Try re-reading the article and maybe you will learn something. You claimed almost two years ago that Chicago real estate would decline 20% from where it was at the time. Instead, real estate prices have increased from that time period and at best you can claim they gave some of those gains back. The median sales price is still higher than the prices when you made your first initial claim. You still need to give back more gains and then get another 20%… Read more »
LOL to the trib’s misleading headline, which I only read, because I don’t read click links to the trib. Home sales down 11% Not prices of course.
But upon closer inspection, yes, the number of home sales is down 11% to the lowest levels since the armageddon of 2008. Unfortunately the tribune article doesn’t lay out the home price declines, but my basic math shows that prices have declined 5% in the city and 4% Chicago metro SINCE JULY 2023. Yes, there is some seasonality to home prices but a 5% drop in Chicago in two months? LOOK OUT BELOW!
Nice of you to admit that you make comments without first gathering the facts. Prices are still up and looking at a one or two month decline is beyond ridiculous. Prices are up for the year and definitely up from the two year mark when you said prices would plummet. Now that you admitted you didn’t read the article and just spew more of your BS, now it’s time to admit that you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to your price decline predication. Living in a constant state of doom and gloom you can’t… Read more »
The number of home sales and “average prices” are actually meaningless, so we probably should not have even posted this. The average just reflects whether it’s the high end or low end that is selling the most. The number of sales matters to brokers but doesn’t mean much else. The monthly Case-Shiller index, what we always publish, is what counts because it focuses on same-home price changes.
Agree that Case-Shiller index is more accurate although it does have a built in delay in getting the latest results. We know when reviewing the latest Case-Schiller index that Chicago real estate has not plummeted and in fact the July report shows that price appreciation in Chicago was at the top compared to other large cities. Anyone that has been predicting a 20% decline from 2 years ago has been massively wrong. Chicago has many things wrong with it starting with crime. As bad as it is, the residential real estate market has been extremely resilient. The doom and gloom… Read more »
Patience, grasshopper….
You only have a couple months left. You need to 25-30% drop from today for you to be correct. I know you love cheering for bad news but it doesn’t look like you will get your wish. Keep screaming about the sky falling. Maybe some day you’ll be right.
What are you talking about 25-30% from today? It took five years in 2007-2012 to get those kind of drops. I say patience because this is a slow moving train wreck.
That was your prediction. It sounds like you are backing out of YOUR original prediction. I get it. The numbers don’t align so now you are trying to walk it back. About two years ago you stated Chicago real estate would plummet by 20% within the next two years. Not only did it not drop but the prices have risen since that time. I asked you for a specific percentage drop as well as time frame and after several bloviating comments you finally committed. So yes, you would need a a 25-30% drop for your original ridiculous claim to hold… Read more »
That’s not true. 25-30% drop in two years? I think you may have misunderstood my original prediction, and I’ll take credit for that. I tried to say that price declines would begin within two years and that prices would fall overall 25-30%. Not that prices would decline 25-30% in two years. My neighbor told me that several weeks ago and I told him he needs to be more patient. I’m old enough to have lived through several Federal Reserve created property bubbles, and they move quite slowly, although this CS data from the Fed only goes back to 1988.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CHXRSA
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPCS20RSA
This is a link to the 20 city composite. You can see the price decline that happened a year ago but then it bounced back up again. You call this resiliency, I call this the dead cat bounce.
“A bubble in need of bursting. An overheated environment that had to be cooled. A correction for a real estate market out of balance. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been upfront about the Fed’s motivation for months’ worth of interest rate hikes. ‘The Fed broke volume but didn’t really break prices,’ Sacramento market analyst and appraiser Ryan Lundquist said. ‘They were very clear about wanting to slow down the economy and wanting the housing market to correct. But they have broken volume. We basically have some of our worst volume ever this year. We’ve never had a market like… Read more »
You made all those kinds of comments and added links to bolster your defense of a 20% decline prediction. Yet it didn’t happen and doesn’t appear that it will any time soon.
You were wrong. Just admit it. You know nothing and only guess and pretend as if you have some type of insight.
You only focus on negative news and then surprise, your prediction is doom and gloom. Your own bias gets in the way of any honest assessment.
Or it’s people who were priced out of the market and saw a decline and jumped back in the market increasing demand. It may go up and down like this for years but nothing indicates a 25%-30% decline anytime soon. Low inventory, high rents, low new construction starts, stricter lending requirements, large numbers of people that want to buy a home but have been forced to the sidelines that will add to future demand are all reasons that point to a tight real estate market in the future. This isn’t the stock market. People actually need a place to live.… Read more »
Nope. That’s not what you said. I was wrong on the 2 years (it was 30 months) but your prediction didn’t state it would just start within that time frame. The funny thing is that it was on a thread where you also denied making the claim in 2021 that Illinois would be insolvent within 10-15 months. I pointed out your lie (you tried to deny then as well even though I had the proof) and then demanded your prediction on Chicago real estate. You tried to use the same hedging techniques you’re using here but I was able to… Read more »
Fine, you win the argument of anonymous internet posters. Does that make you feel better?