You’ll see a lot of reports by midday about the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Value Index, which shows an 18.5 percent drop in home prices in 20 national markets from December 2007 to December 2008, and a 14.3 percent drop in the Chicago market over the same time period.
Remember that Case-Shiller publishes a supplemental report on five major condo markets — Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco. Chicago’s condo values, while still trending downward, have not seen the type of plunge that you’ll find in Case-Shiller’s headline report.
According to today’s index, condo values in Chicago were down 7.3 percent year over year. They dropped 4.7 percent in the fourth quarter alone (compared with a 7.2-percent drop in the entire Chicago home market), and 2 percent from November to December (compared with 3 percent for the full market).