Chicago Housing Boom Ran Out Of Steam in November | Katonah NY Homes

After 20 consecutive months of double digit growth in home sales the Chicago real estate market is ending the year with rather flat year over year sales. When the Illinois Association of Realtors announces the official numbers in a week and a half they are likely to report a slight decline of about 0.3% - basically flat. In reality there was ever so slight growth of about 2.5% - just enough to allow us to claim 29 consecutive months of year over years home sales growth. This was totally expected as contract activity has been slowing down and contracts lead closings by about a month or two.
Given the extremely low levels of home inventories (more on that below) I have to believe that home sales could be a lot stronger. The demand is there, with numerous buyers on the sidelines waiting for the right property to come along. It's just that the supply is not there.

The November sales numbers were pretty much in the middle of the pack over the last 17 years or somewhere between the Novembers of 2001 and 2002 - a long time ago.
The IAR press release will also mention that median home prices were up 11.1%. What this primarily means is that the mix of homes sold is skewing higher but watch the journalists discuss rising prices as if it's the same thing.

Chicago Home Contract Activity

Well, this is the metric that tells us where the market is going and it's looking rather flat, which is how we already know that at least December closings will again be basically flat. I'm estimating that after accounting for contract terminations November contracts will actually be 1.6% below last year.

Pending Home Sales
Chicago homes that remain under contract at the end of November (essentially pending home sales) declined once again from the previous month to 4292, which means that more homes either closed or had their contracts terminated than went under contract. This is normal at this time of the year. However, when viewed relative to the current sales rate the months of supply of pending homes actually went up a tad to a 2.4 month supply.



http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2013/12/chicago-real-estate-market-ran-out-of-steam-november/