My sense is that the worst of the Covid-19 crisis might be behind the Chicago real estate market though it’s not totally going away any time soon. Looking back at my previous weekly updates it appears that weeks 5 and 6 might have been the bottom. Weeks 7 and 8 were harder to interpret because the Easter bunny came a week earlier this year but it did look like things were getting better. Week 9, which is the week ending May 2, seems to be showing a bit more improvement:

Detached Homes

• New listings were down 39% from last year to 305 homes
• Contract activity was down 38% to 177
• Inventory in absolute terms was down 17% to 2760 homes
• However, in relative terms inventory was actually up from 11.6 weeks of supply to 15.6 weeks

Attached Homes

• New listings were down 40% to 533 homes
• Contract activity was down 44% to 250
• Inventory in absolute terms was down 13% to 4947 homes
• Inventory in relative terms was up from 12.6 weeks of supply to 19.8 weeks

As ugly as they still are, these stats seem to confirm that the Chicago real estate market is somewhat improving. In addition, anecdotally, our phone stopped ringing there for a month or two but in the last week we started to get calls again. To avoid simply reporting on the progress of paint drying I’ll probably stop covering this every week, waiting instead for evidence that things have gotten a lot better.

#RealEstate #ChicagoRealEstate #Coronavirus

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.