The Tribune brings news that homebuilders are active again in the far-flung burbs.
The familiar sights and sounds of homebuilding are getting easier to spot, if you know where to look.
Cement trucks are pouring foundations and carpenters are framing new homes in communities like Volo, Wauconda, Pingree Grove and Montgomery. And in Lake County, Ill., and Lake County, Ind., signs advertising new builder communities are sprouting in the ground.
Make no mistake: Mass production builders have no grand ambitions like those that guided them when they were each constructing and selling hundreds of single-family detached homes annually on newly annexed raw land. In fact, for the 12-month period ended in June, housing starts in the Chicago area were down 20 percent, to 2,154 homes, and home sales, at 3,157, were down 24 percent, according to a new report by housing research firm Metrostudy.
Still, there are pockets of opportunity, and the publicly held builders that dominate the market are taking advantage. The top 10 subdivisions in terms of annual sales of single-family detached homes all are on the outer fringe of the Chicago area and all are projects that the nation’s largest companies started years ago.
A mere 20 to 24 percent year-over-year decline doesn’t sound all that disastrous – until you compare the 2,154 home starts over the preceding 12 months to the 30,000+ a year that was the norm for a while.
With the exception of Winfield IN we’ve been to all of the communities mentioned in the Trib article. If all of the homes planned for Volo, for example, had been built its population would have grown more than 100-fold in a short span of time. Surveying the vast, empty fields of unrealized 3-car garage dreams often evoked a “what could their lenders have been thinking?” response.