The Albany Park condominium market has heretofore been fairly stable compared to its peers, but suffered a steep drop in sales velocity and median selling price in 4Q 2010.
While late 2008 and early 2009 saw sales drop off, the sales volume appeared to be stabilizing around 70 units per quarter for the last four quarters. The median selling price started 2007 at about $250,000 but had slid to about $200,000 by the middle of 2010 without any serious drops — until the fourth quarter, when the median selling price was $115,000, compared with $205,000 in the third quarter.
Citywide data have indicated that this quarter was an unusual one in Chicago real estate. It will be interesting to see if this is the exception in Albany Park.
Jeff Baird is a real estate valuation consultant based in Chicago. He founded Lakeshore Analytics to bring comprehensive, understandable housing data and analysis to Chicago-area readers. The site features a blog with free market news and charts, summary data on 20 top neighborhoods, and quarterly data subscriptions.