Chicago Home Sales Plunge Puzzling
Analysts are scratching their heads over the the recent plunge in home sales in the Chicago-area. For the first two months of the year, they have declined 12.1 percent from 2006. Many were expecting to see a spring bounce back, and instead see a market that continues to struggle.
David Stiff, a housing-market analyst with Fiserv says Chicago is not performing according to expectations. He’s quote in the Chicago Tribune as saying “It’s not a market that got caught up in the bubble, and it didn’t have affordability issues. I suppose buyers have gotten caught up in the general psychology and are sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see what happens,” added Stiff, whose company studies home-sales data in regional markets.
“I think of Illinois as a bellwether for other markets that didn’t get caught up in the bubble,” he said. “We have been forecasting about 4 percent price appreciation, year over year, in the Chicago area.”