Chicago is a huge city, one the country's biggest, so recent trends in the Chicago real estate market must be closely examined before entering the market. Because the city is so big, it must be viewed instead as a large grouping of smaller neighborhoods and their trends. Viewed as the entirety of Cook County, real estate in Chicago is still showing slight declines, suggesting that its ultimate bottom may not have yet been reached.
Data from Zip Realty for the entire area in September seemed to show some slight signs of improvement. There were 1,886 homes sold, an increase of 7% from September 2008's 1,766, though the sales price was down 17% for the year at $271,394 from $327,116. The number of days homes are spending on the market is falling as well though, from 166 in September 2008 to last month's 149, a decline of 10%. This shows more inventory is moving as buyers enter the market.
For month-to-month changes, figures showed slight falls from August, with sales volume down a slight 2% and prices falling by 8%. Price per square foot was down 7% from August to September. The only improvement in real estate in Chicago was the monthly data was the days on the market, which fell to 149 in September from 154 in August.
According to data from real estate data provider Zillow available on the Yahoo! Real Estate website, there were 16,760 homes for sale in Chicago in mid-October with a median price of just under $295,000, unchanged from September sales figures. There were five new homes for sale in the city with a high-end median price of $950,000, and there were more than 21,300 foreclosed homes on the market in Chicago, with a median price of $216,000, up slightly by 0.7% from September's numbers.