Housing sales in Chatham are proceeding at a brisk pace despite misperceptions on the part of both sellers and buyers, says Cynthia Draper-Hill, an associate broker at Betts Realty Group in Evergreen Park.
Draper-Hill is a longtime Chatham resident who sells homes in the area.
“Chatham is always a desirable market because of its stability,” she said in a phone interview on Friday. “Properly-priced properties are very actively sought after, and multiple contracts are not unheard of. But the key is properly-priced products.”
“In terms of appreciation, I think one of the problems sellers have is that they look at the media and they see the prices of properties on the North Side, and the prices for condos specifically, and they expect that their properties will appreciate at a greater rate than they actually do. If you take a bungalow on the North Side, it could be a frame [rather than load-bearing brick], and it will sell for $200,000, $300,000, and on the South Side, that market is just not yet there. ”
Similar properties can easily sell for twice as much on the North Side as in places like Chatham.
Draper-Hill notes that some sellers on the North Side will get more for their two- or three-bedroom condos than she will be able to get for the two-flat she is about to list.
This overestimation of resale value is hardly unique to Chatham. Among other South Side communities, Park Manor, Pullman and Roseland are areas where sellers are susceptible to the same miscalculations, Draper-Hill commented.
Meanwhile, buyers in Chatham and its surrounding areas are sometimes guilty of the opposite mistake, she said.
“They see media that say it’s a buyer’s market, and then they come to Chatham and other South Side communities believing that they’re in a stronger bargaining position than they are.
“So they may try to lowball a product, and we’re going to have multiple offers on properly-priced homes. So a buyer thinks ‘Well, I’m going to get this for a song,’ and that’s just not happening.”