The North Side market may look stable compared to other areas of the city, but Bob Darrow says he’s continually surprised by the number of quality homes that have been closing for well below their expected prices. The @properties agent and Your Windy City Guide blogger told me yesterday that it’s becoming more and more common to see homes sell for 10 percent below list prices, even in cases where those list prices are well below a seller’s desired value.
Yesterday afternoon I looked up recent sales for Lincoln Park, Lake View, and North Center, and found that while the majority of closing prices in the three community areas over the past three months hewed close to original asking prices, the number of homes that closed at 10 percent or more in each neighborhood was definitely significant.
In Lincoln Park, 67 homes out of 242 sold for 10 percent off or more; of those, 25 sold for at least 15 percent off, and seven for at least 20 percent off. (Note that these 242 sales don’t represent every closing that occurred between mid-February and today, just the ones whose information was available on Redfin.) The vast majority of all those sales weren’t characterized as short sales, although the neighborhood leader among list-to-sale ratio was: a one-bedroom / one-bath condo at 2625 N Clark St that sold for $117,000, or 57 percent off its original price.
In Lake View, 100 of the 412 sales I reviewed sold for 10 percent off or more, 44 for 15 percent off or more, and 22 for 20 percent off or more. The loss-leader here was a one-bedroom / one-bath condo at 3765 N Racine Ave that sold for $108,800, or 46 percent off its original price. It was not listed as a short sale.
In North Center, 24 of the 109 sales I reviewed sold for 10 percent off or more, nine for 15 percent off or more, and just three for 20 percent off or more. The biggest reduction here came in the form of a short sale: a six-bedroom / 4.5-bath single-family home at 1833 W Melrose St that sold for $1.12 million, or 36 percent off its list price.
In each case, this comes out to about one in four sales in the past quarter seeing gaps of double-digit percentages between list price and sale price. It’ll be interesting to see if this number grows as the year goes on.