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25-Apr-24 – North Side home and condominium price increases, along with higher mortgage costs, are hitting buyers with a one-two punch this spring. “It remains a challenging market for buyers, particularly first-time buyers struggling to save an adequate down payment,” said Realtor Mary Jo Nathan of Baird & Warner’s North Center office at 4037 North Damen Avenue. Baird & Warner’s quarterly Chicago North Side Market Report, authored by Nathan, tracks sales of single-family and attached homes in the neighborhoods of Edgewater, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, Near North Side, North Center, Rogers Park, Uptown, and West Ridge.
On the other hand, median prices of attached homes – condominiums and townhomes – increased only 8.1 percent during that same four-year period (2020 to 2024), she said. The first-quarter median home price for the North Side registered a modest increase largely in line with the overall rate of inflation, gaining 3.9 percent to $395,000. “However, we saw substantial first-quarter increases in the median prices of both attached and detached homes in Rogers Park, Uptown, and West Ridge, which suggests to me that the more moderately priced homes in those communities are attracting greater interest from buyers these days,” Nathan concluded. Sales volume slides First-quarter North Side home sales totaled 1,589 units, down 5.6 percent from the same period last year. That contrasts sharply with the results of one year ago when first quarter sales fell 32.5 percent from the comparable period in 2022. It took an average of 84 days for a home to go under contract in the first quarter, 10 days fewer than in the first quarter of 2023. “The steep year-over-year declines in sales volume we were seeing in the 18 months prior to the start of 2024 appear to have abated, but the market is still hampered by inventory levels that are near historic lows,” Nathan said. Here is an analysis of the Baird & Warner statistics on the first quarter of 2024: Single-Family Homes. Unit sales of single-family (detached) homes across the North Side rose 2 percent in the first quarter to 152 units, while the median sales price climbed a hefty 20.9 percent to $1.285 million. It is the 14th consecutive quarter for which the median sales price exceeded $1 million.
“One reason we saw such a strong increase in the median price is that sales rose in the areas where homes are most expensive and generally declined in areas where prices tend to be more moderate,” Nathan explained. For example, Nathan said sales volume rose 16 percent in North Center, 23.8 percent in Lincoln Park, and 41.2 percent in Lakeview. But unit sales were lower in Lincoln Square, Edgewater, and Rogers Park, and essentially flat in West Ridge. Nathan also noted that the single-family market on the North Side is seeing a modest increase in the inventory of homes for sale, with 165 listings available at the end of the first quarter this year compared to 155 homes last year. As for median prices of single-family homes, they rose in six of the nine neighborhoods. When compared with the same period in 2023, the first-quarter 2024 gains were:
The median home price fell 12.1 percent in Edgewater to $859,000. In Lakeview, the home price decline was 2.1 percent to $1,498,125. On the Near North Side, the decline was a modest 1.7 percent to $2,457,000. Condos and Townhouses. There were 1,437 attached-home sales during the quarter. That represents a 6.3 percent decline from one year ago. Attached homes consist primarily of condo units and townhouses. Attached home unit sales rose in just one of the nine neighborhoods that make up the North Side. But that one – the Near North Side, including Gold Coast and Streeterville – was the most significant in terms of the attached-home market. Unit sales there rose 7.6 percent to 537 units, accounting for 37.4 percent of all attached sales for the first quarter of 2024.
The median attached-home sales price rose in seven of the nine North Side communities. Uptown led the way with a 29.2 percent gain to $342,500, followed by Lincoln Park, where the median of $612,500 represented a 25 percent increase. Other attached-home median price gains were:
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