Regional Spotlight—September is traditionally the month when both air temperatures and housing market activity retreat from their summer highs, but that wasn’t exactly the case this year. The Chicago area enjoyed balmy weather, and the metropolitan Chicago real estate market continued to flex its muscles. Matched against results for the prior September, the median home sales price last month rose 16 percent, and the number of home sales increased 26 percent, according to RE/MAX.
Those gains compare to year-over-year increases in the median sales price of 18 percent in August and 19 percent in July, while the number of homes sold climbed 25 percent in August and 36 percent in July.
Home sales in the seven-county metro Chicago market totaled 9,469 units in September, up from 7,508 units a year earlier. The median sales price for the month was $185,000, up from $160,000 a year ago. The average number of days that a listed property spent on the market before going under contract for sale was 97 days, a considerably faster sales pace than the 137 days recorded last September.
Inventory of detached and attached homes for sale expanded in September for the fifth consecutive month, totaling 35,356 properties. That is the largest inventory for any month this year and equaled a 3.7 month supply of homes based on the pace of sales in September. That is down from a six-month supply a year earlier. The RE/MAX analysis is based on sales data gathered by MRED LLC, the regional multiple listing service.
