It won’t be much surprise to anyone who lives and breathes real estate, but the numbers are sobering nonetheless: Total home sales in Chicago declined 21 percent last year from 2007 levels and new construction took a serious hit.
Here are the highlights of an analysis of all residential real estate transactions in Chicago in 2008:
Developers sold 8,500 new attached (condominium or townhome) units in 2007 and just 2,500 in 2008. That is the lowest number of new condominium or townhome units sold since at least 2002, if not before.
The number of new detached homes fared hardly better — 1,784 were sold in 2007 and that dropped to just 758 in 2008. Including attached and detached housing, total new home sales in Chicago fell 68 percent from 2007 levels.
Sales of existing units were down as well, but not as precipitously. Total sales in Chicago—new and existing, attached and detached—were down 21 percent.
Out of 77 Chicago community areas, only four experienced an increase in the number of home sales between 2007 and 2008. They are the Near South Side (including the South Loop), South Deering, Calumet Heights, and Armour Square. However, the latter three experience low levels of home sales and had a negligible increase.
Essentially, the South Loop was the only neighborhood to sell more homes in 2008 than in 2007. Nice stat, but it is little comfort to at least one South Loop developer, who is planning to auction 40 out of 100 remaining units in a new tower.
See an overview of city-wide sales trends here.