Market Conditions: May Home Sales Plunged 43.6% in Chicago Due to COVID-19

The May home sales data is out and, as expected, it was bad as the COVID-19 lockdown continued.

From the Illinois Association of Realtors:

The city of Chicago saw year-over-year home sales decrease 43.6 percent with 1,666 sales in May, compared to 2,952 a year ago. The median price of a home in the city of Chicago in May was $315,000, unchanged from May 2019.

Single family home sales fell 33% while condo sales fell 49.6%.

May Sales:

  • May 2008: 2119 sales
  • May 2009: 1557 sales
  • May 2010: 2057 sales
  • May 2011: 1705 sales
  • May 2012: 2037 sales
  • May 2013: 2834 sales
  • May 2014: 2453 sales
  • May 2015: 2750 sales
  • May 2016: 2980 sales
  • May 2017: 3046 sales
  • May 2018: 3047 sales
  • May 2019: 2952 sales
  • May 2020: 1666 sales

Median Price Data:

  • May 2008: $319,500
  • May 2009: $225,000
  • May 2010: $230,000
  • May 2011: $190,000
  • May 2012: $203,000
  • May 2013: $234,000
  • May 2014: $269,250
  • May 2015: $281,000
  • May 2016: $290,750
  • May 2017: $305,600
  • May 2018: $305,000
  • May 2019: $315,000
  • May 2020: $315,000

“In May we saw the impact of the prolonged stay at home order, with a sharp 43.6 percent decline in closed sales and 22.4 percent decline in inventory,” said Maurice Hampton, president of the Chicago Association of REALTORS® and owner of Centered International Realty. “Prices, however, remained steady from last year – a good indicator. We expect that, as Chicago progresses through reopening, the market will respond accordingly.”

The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 3.23% in May, down from 3.31% in April and down from 4.07% in May 2019.

Inventory plunged in the city by 22.4% to 7,831 from 10,096 properties a year ago.

“After a two-month lag, the downturn in the economy filtered into the housing market,” said Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois. “However, as expected by many analysts, prices have declined much less than sales, and forecasts point to slightly positive price increases over the next few months in Chicago.”

Despite the big one-month decline in home sales, May 2020 still wasn’t the worst May for the city.

May 2009 had even fewer sales. That was 2 months after the stock market bottomed and when the Great Recession, and layoffs, were at their peak.

Chicago home prices didn’t hit their lows until 2012 however.

Will home prices decline over the next 3 years like they did the last time sales plunged?

COVID-19 brings steep declines in Illinois home sales and inventory in May [Illinois Association of Realtors, Press Release, June 22, 2020]

274 Responses to “Market Conditions: May Home Sales Plunged 43.6% in Chicago Due to COVID-19”

  1. The median price of a home in the city of Chicago in May was $315,000, unchanged from May 2019.

    I was kinda expecting the median price to rise as Covid has had a greater impact on the MC/LMC than those above. Maybe the lack of Jumbo loans is slowing the market

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  2. Not fighting against a glut of foreclosed homes so the recovery should be much quicker.

    Low interest rates will serve to do what they always do, inflate asset prices. In Chicago, low interest rates do not really drive bubbles, just maintains Chicago’s record of being the worst appreciating real estate in the country. Chicago has been at the bottom for appreciation how many years now? How does Chicago make up for that missed potential property tax revenue from inflated assets? Well, increase the property tax, of course.

    Curious to see the inflows and outflows with Chicago though. New York City has shown so much outflow to Florida before COVID and then after it only increased exponentially. The cost of living in Chicago is a bit lower so I expect it to be less dramatic.

    Chicago has positives and negative catalysts heading into the election as well. Should there be a massive left wave and the left wins the Senate – it’s almost a guarantee that the SALT deduction will be back. Pelosi even tried to sneak it in the COVID recovery bill – because you know having property tax and income tax greater than the standard deduction is totally something that benefits the middle class LOL. If that happens though, Hinsdale EgoMansions will be back in style, they’ve languished since 2016 when the deduction was removed. Higher end Chicago condos will do a little better.

    And in the worst case scenario Biden’s tax increases on corporations which will pressure equities, removal of long term tax cap gains discount on 1%ers , 2-3% tax increase at the highest bracket, 5-7% increase in FICA + Pritzker’s plan for a progressive tax will push the highest earners into 60% tax rate territory which I believe will cause a massive wealth transfer to low tax states. High end will languish hard if all that happens, worse than is ever has.

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  3. apparently purchase interest rates are far lower than refinance rates at the moment, can get 2.75% on a 30 year fixed purchase with excellent credit while refinances are 3.125%

    waiting for refis to catch up… that will be nice

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  4. anonIDGAF here’s an article from January 2020 that breaks down the numbers from IRS data

    https://wirepoints.org/new-irs-data-record-number-of-illinoisans-leave-state-as-tax-base-continues-to-shrink-wirepoints-special-report/

    IRS data doesn’t lie, and it will be real interesting to see the numbers after this disastrous year for Illinois

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  5. I’ve read and heard anecdotally that new contracts have rebounded pretty significantly … but in the suburbs.

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  6. Long time reader, first time poster. Thought this was as good a time as any.

    I’m a millennial buying my first house, closing at the end of June. I’ve been really hesitant to put down roots in Chicago/Cook County/Illinois with all the uncertainty around increasing taxes, underfunded pensions, and all that. Thought it was a pretty good time to be a renter and not be chained to any of that. Plus, there was never anything that we wanted to buy AND could afford. I’ve had Redfin filters set for years to monitor anything that met my (admittedly very difficult) criteria.

    But then we got lucky. Someone on our current street, a nice quiet one way in Wicker Park, let slip they were thinking about listing. They just need more space since they’ve all been home for the quarantine and have outgrown the house, so they’re looking for something bigger in Bucktown. We have student loan payments bigger than our rent every month, but those are on hold for COVID so that’s fortuitous. I work in tech and COVID hasn’t been a bust for us, so that’s encouraging. So we went from not being in the market to closing in 30 days during a global pandemic. Crazy.

    It wasn’t easy to find a lender doing Jumbo loans with COVID afoot. The online guys like Rocket Mortgage etc. were just flat out not offering Jumbos. Chase would only do a Jumbo with 20% down AND 18 months of LIQUID reserves required for the life of the loan. Loan Depot could get it done with 10% down and no real reserve requirements. And we joined a local credit union who offered us 3.25% 10-1 ARM with lender-paid PMI. Boom.

    So it’s just an anecdote, but in my opinion as a buyer, the market IS HAWT for anything that’s really desirable. Single family home with recent updates under a million seems like it’s definitely one of the brackets…there is literally 0 inventory to choose from and we pounced on this one pre-market.

    There are probably some other brackets with real buyers but 0 inventory when creatively defined.

    A two unit building with a duplex-up owners unit and a duplex-down with 3 or 4 bedrooms at basically any price point or level of finish.

    A three-flat that you can live in and the rent from the other two units nearly pays your mortgage.

    A new(er) construction SFH anywhere in the green zone for 1.2 million.

    I would say those are all categories that currently have exactly 0 inventory but something realistically DOES pop up from time to time. And when something does pop up in a category like that, no surprise that the market times are single digit days if it even has a chance to get to the market.

    On the other hand, anything that isn’t an immediate “yes” is a hard “no”. I wouldn’t casually make any move in this state in this economic environment right now. No way. Anything that isn’t HAWT never will be no matter how long it sits on the market and reduces price. At best it can become a “deal”, at worst it could literally never sell.

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  7. I did a quick update with data through June 13. Contracts and showings actually ahead of last year now. Inventory still tight. http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2020/06/the-lingering-impact-of-covid-19-on-the-chicago-real-estate-market/

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  8. Gary

    In the “Illinois Real Estate Showings Have Made A Complete Comeback” section, The graph you show does paint a positive picture, however I don’t think the data supports the title. If it was a “Complete comeback” the current numbers should be higher than currently shown as many buyers didn’t buy March thru say mid May.

    Also in regards to the attached/MF section how has the lack of appreciation affected the ability to move up?

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  9. Why don’t you think the graph paints a positive picture? Assuming the starting points were the same we are above where we were last year. I’m not saying we made up for the lost time – just that we’re back to normal levels of activity.

    Sorry, but what is MF? Not multi-family. That’s a different category all together. I don’t think you need appreciation to move up. I mean…it helps with the down payment but I hope people only move up if they can actually afford the higher cost.

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  10. “Why don’t you think the graph paints a positive picture? Assuming the starting points were the same we are above where we were last year. I’m not saying we made up for the lost time – just that we’re back to normal levels of activity.”

    Huh? I said that it “does paint a positive picture”. Where I disagreed was that the data showed a complete comeback. If it was a complete comeback, the people that were postponed from purchasing due to Covid should be additive to ’19 numbers, like a reverse cash for clunkers pulling demand forward. To date I don’t think its clear from the chart that that’s the case.

    “Sorry, but what is MF? Not multi-family. That’s a different category all together. I don’t think you need appreciation to move up. I mean…it helps with the down payment but I hope people only move up if they can actually afford the higher cost.”

    Yes, whats the break between Multi & Attached?

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  11. “I did a quick update with data through June 13. Contracts and showings actually ahead of last year now. Inventory still tight.”

    Thanks for the update Gary. The inventory situation is horrible. It’s not just Chicago but it’s like that in most cities that I follow across the country. No one is listing. No one wants to move, apparently.

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  12. “So it’s just an anecdote, but in my opinion as a buyer, the market IS HAWT for anything that’s really desirable. Single family home with recent updates under a million seems like it’s definitely one of the brackets…there is literally 0 inventory to choose from and we pounced on this one pre-market.”

    Thanks for the insights MK and congrats on buying your first home.

    There’s almost no inventory in several categories across the city and when those properties come on the market, they sell super fast. Like I’ve been saying, the market IS hot in certain types of properties.

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  13. “I’ve read and heard anecdotally that new contracts have rebounded pretty significantly … but in the suburbs.”

    In June?

    Chicago metro sales down 37.3% in May. Inventory down 24%. These would have gone under contract in March and April.

    If suburban homes are selling in Chicagoland, that will be a change from the last few years and would offer relief to the Baby Boomers who have been trying to sell for years to leave the state for Florida, Texas or Arizona. It’s been a bloodbath for them in the outer suburbs like St. Charles/Geneva/Elgin, and Barrington/Long Grove and all of the North Shore. Flossmoor and Olympia Fields have been awful on the South Side too.

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  14. “IRS data doesn’t lie, and it will be real interesting to see the numbers after this disastrous year for Illinois”

    Why is it “disastrous” when there are other states getting hit harder due to COVID like Hawaii and Nevada? Unemployment could still be at 15% to 20% there by the end of the year. Just too heavy in tourism/hospitality.

    At least Illinois has a diverse economy that is weathering the storm well. We are the Midwest tech hub, one of the largest producers of soybeans and still have a great manufacturing base. We’re also a transportation hub for airlines, freight from trains and trucks. Also big in finance which was an essential business and has been operating this entire time.

    States and cities will get a federal bailout for COVID to balance their budgets in this next relief package. And if they do an infrastructure bill, Illinois on tap to receive more than other states in money from that.

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  15. “New York City has shown so much outflow to Florida before COVID and then after it only increased exponentially.”

    This has been expected for 20 years. There are 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day now. They were always going to leave the Northeast and the Midwest. But demographers always wondered what would happen to the housing markets as GenX wasn’t big enough to buy all of their homes. And Millennials ARE big enough, but they don’t want to live in the suburbs. So what happens to the suburban homes?

    All you need to do is look at Chicago’s North Shore and you’ll see.

    Also, in Chicago, I’m expecting a lot of inventory to come on in the Gold Coast, Streeterville and Lincoln Park also from Baby Boomer sellers. You can already see it in some buildings like the WaterTower and others where people have lived for 30 years. As one woman who sold on Michigan Avenue said last year, she just wanted to retire to Florida and didn’t want to deal with the winters anymore. Had bought in the 1990s.

    Who can blame her?

    I wouldn’t live in these winters in my 70s or 80s either.

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  16. “Pelosi even tried to sneak it in the COVID recovery bill – because you know having property tax and income tax greater than the standard deduction is totally something that benefits the middle class LOL”

    Don’t forget, everyone in Pelosi’s district actually WOULD benefit from SALT deductions coming back. The Bay Area got hit hard.

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  17. “This has been expected for 20 years. There are 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day now. They were always going to leave the Northeast and the Midwest. But demographers always wondered what would happen to the housing markets as GenX wasn’t big enough to buy all of their homes. And Millennials ARE big enough, but they don’t want to live in the suburbs. So what happens to the suburban homes?
    All you need to do is look at Chicago’s North Shore and you’ll see. ”

    The North shore (Winnetka, Kenilworth, etc) isn’t and never has been where you buy your first home (Unless you were born on 3rd base like that fat bastard Pritzker). The oldest Millennials are barely at the age where they’d have enough $ to do so. Add in the fact that they’re getting married and starting families later and there hasn’t been the need for them to have a 4+Br abode as they aren’t getting married until they’re in their late 20’s (Ave age 28). Assuming they don’t start squeezing out pups until they’re 30, the oldest Millennials kids are still 6 years out of HS.

    The Very Wealthy will always have options to stay in the City or move to the burbs to insure their kids a good education. The UMC will be facing a tougher decision

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  18. “The North shore (Winnetka, Kenilworth, etc) isn’t and never has been where you buy your first home (Unless you were born on 3rd base like that fat bastard Pritzker).”

    Excuse me. Wilmette, parts of Winnetka, parts of Glencoe (there’s condos and townhouses there!) and large parts of Highland Park all have first time homes.

    There are the cutest smaller bungalows near Ravina, by the way, if anyone is looking.

    Boomers are trying to get out of all of those places. But no one wants to live up there anymore. No one wants to take the train into the city for work.

    Sure, Glencoe and Winnetka also have big mansions. Especially near the lake. But please go look at the Redfin map before you say that first time home buyers can’t buy there.

    It’s cheaper than buying in Southport, for goodness sakes.

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  19. “The UMC will be facing a tougher decision”

    What “decision”? LMFAO.

    It’s the same one that caused those townhouses in Southport to go under contract within days. It’s really not a tough decision. At all.

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  20. “ What “decision”? LMFAO.
    It’s the same one that caused those townhouses in Southport to go under contract within days. It’s really not a tough decision. At all.”

    The decision if they’re going to stay in the city when their kids hit HS.

    Try and keep up

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  21. “ Excuse me. Wilmette, parts of Winnetka, parts of Glencoe (there’s condos and townhouses there!) and large parts of Highland Park all have first time homes.
    There are the cutest smaller bungalows near Ravina, by the way, if anyone is looking.
    Boomers are trying to get out of all of those places. But no one wants to live up there anymore. No one wants to take the train into the city for work.
    Sure, Glencoe and Winnetka also have big mansions. Especially near the lake. But please go look at the Redfin map before you say that first time home buyers can’t buy there.
    It’s cheaper than buying in Southport, for goodness sakes.”

    You are excused

    Reading is Fundamental

    Right now the demographics are not favoring the NS. As you stated GenX can’t absorb the boomers homes. What you can’t or won’t fail to grasp is Millennials aren’t at an age when they would move to Winnetka,

    We’ll see what happens in 5-10 years

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  22. Some homes in the north shore actually took a favorable bounce during Covid. The staying at home all day with kids thing has caught up to some families. Had good friends in Wilmette last year and they have seen first hand the turnover of several properties in tbeir hood.

    Priced well and in good shape moves quicker than it had last year. But that’s also likely due to Invebtory. I’d say the last few months that unless you really needs to move the last thing you did was list your house. The non stop fear on the news about surface transmission meant that no one wanted people coming into their homes.

    Think that had a large impact on potential listings.

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  23. “As you stated GenX can’t absorb the boomers homes.”
    —————————–
    Sure they can. Covid-19 culls the herd of baby boomers, the kids and grandkids inherit, and Bob’s your uncle.

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  24. @JohnnyU
    1. “The oldest Millennials are barely at the age where they’d have enough $ to do so”
    and
    2. “Millennials aren’t at an age when they would move to Winnetka, We’ll see what happens in 5-10 years”

    These sound like two similar statements but in my opinion they’re two separate things.

    Statement (1) says Millennials aren’t going to the NS because they can’t afford it. I don’t agree with that and neither does Sabrina apparently. The types of people who can and did move to the NS, whether early in their career or later in life, still exist in the same proportion they used to. Maybe they used to be called Yuppies, I don’t know. If you could afford your first home on the NS 30 years ago, you still can today, you just may be a doctor, lawyer, or tech worker instead of a doctor, lawyer, or accountant. If you weren’t in the running 30 years ago because you were a ditch digger, now you similarly aren’t able to move there because you’re a ‘content creator’ or some crap.

    (2) says Millennials’ preferences haven’t changed, and that when they get older they’ll follow the same path as their parents did at that stage of life. Maybe. I agree that we’ll see what happens in 5-10 years.

    My anecdote is that I “should” have been one of those Millennials moving to the NS right about now for a starter home, but found the concept extremely unappealing.

    The housing stock up there is really tired. If that’s something you care about at all, the only things interesting are a MCM ranch in the ravines of Glencoe, a few buildings with good bones in Kenilworth and East Wilmette, or a newer place in Winnetka. Not everyone reads Cribchatter daily and I have friends who have bought something fugly from the 70s or 80s, or something with split face block and rickety construction from the 00s, but that’s not for me.

    Or, more generally applicable to Millennials: Many of the NS downtown areas have matured a lot over the last few decades and Wilmette, Winnetka, Highland Park, and Evanston each have a few cute restaurants in areas that used to be ghost towns in the evening. But nothing on the NS can hold a candle to the diversity of options we have downtown. ESPECIALLY in quarantine times! When the second wave of COVID hits, we would much rather be able to open our phone apps and have literally hundreds of options to choose from for delivery, versus on the NS proper you really only can choose between one of two pizza places. In the rest of the suburbs, you can at least choose between Applebees and Chilis…

    I’m not even a perfect example of a true city dweller. We have 2 cars and go to Costco every week. But guess what, we do that downtown instead of out in the ‘burbs.

    Yeah, we’ll have a choice to make in 10 years once we have a few kids who are going to school. Maybe we’ll make enough to send them to private school, maybe CPS will continue improving, maybe in the future we’ll realize that the way we do schooling today has a lot of silly artifacts of past times when kids needed to be off for the summer to labor on farms and schools were architecturally designed to look like factories so that it would be an easy transition to daily life as a factory worker once you graduated.

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  25. I’m 36 and moved from East Lakeview to Winnetka in Fall of 2019. We purchased a 3200 sq ft home in East Winnetka with a 5 minute walk to the train and beach for under $1mm. My home sold for about 1mm pre-bubble and before an addition was added. The home was listed for 30% below its 2008 sales price and we paid list within 12 hours of it being listed. There was a ton of interest in our house and the selling realtor said buyers came to her after the contract was signed and offered above list. According to my realtor, the mkt is much different than it was 6-12 months ago. She is hearing from a lot of people who are looking to get out of the city. She used the phrase “Winnetka is on fire!” It is purely anecdotal but it seems busy up here. Homes I had saved during our housing search that had languished for years are now selling. Anything move-in ready under 1.25mm seems to be going under contract fast in Winnetka.

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Winnetka/652-Lincoln-Ave-60093/home/13787840
    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Winnetka/731-Lincoln-Ave-60093/home/13788623
    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Winnetka/1447-Edgewood-Ln-60093/home/13789341

    What surprised me the most is that there are a ton of young families here and more moving in every day. The vast, vast majority of my friends who grew up up here have moved back from city once they started having kids. But we all seem to be 5-7 years behind where our parents were in terms of having kids. I think it will be interesting to watch what happens over the next 5-10 years up here as more Millenials have children and see the value proposition of buying a SFH in Green Zone vs the NS. I was hesitant to move out of the city; worried I’d miss the restaurants, the easy commute, and the excitement. After 8 months, I dont. It is too convenient and peaceful up here. Having a yard during COVID with 2 babies has been a Godsend. The restaurants are closed and WFH means I have no commute at the moment (though being so close to the train station, my commute from Winnetka is only slightly longer than when I was in ELV).

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  26. What you can’t or won’t fail to grasp is Millennials aren’t at an age when they would move to Winnetka,

    The oldest millennials are 40. What age are you thinking people move to Winnetka?

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  27. “we pounced on this one pre-market” Congratulations, MK! Sounds like you got a deal.

    But the flip side of this is that the seller lost out. A deal for MK means money left on the table for seller. Why did they do this? If there were no agents involved then it makes perfect sense. But if there were agents then I’m like…WTF? This happens all the time. SMH.

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  28. JohnnyU,

    Sorry. I misread your comment a bit.

    Multi-family means basically an investment property. Depending on whether or not you are using formal MLS terminology it could mean 2 – 4 unit buildings or 5+. Attached is condos and townhomes only.

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  29. @mk
    “Statement (1) says Millennials aren’t going to the NS because they can’t afford it. I don’t agree with that and neither does Sabrina apparently. The types of people who can and did move to the NS, whether early in their career or later in life, still exist in the same proportion they used to. Maybe they used to be called Yuppies, I don’t know. If you could afford your first home on the NS 30 years ago, you still can today, you just may be a doctor, lawyer, or tech worker instead of a doctor, lawyer, or accountant. If you weren’t in the running 30 years ago because you were a ditch digger, now you similarly aren’t able to move there because you’re a ‘content creator’ or some crap.”

    A couple of points

    The Millennials are between 23-38. So the vast or at least the majority aren’t at the earning stage where its feasible (Yes you can get a shitty condo on GreenBay Rd or some other crap). The average age is 30.5. Lets take a Dr, a specialist is likely just finishing up their residency so they haven’t started making the big bucks. A GP maybe if they’ve slipped into a deal where they have an equity stake. A Lawyer has 4 years out of law school, maybe if they went to a Tier 1 school. In both cases, both parties usually have high debt. I’m sure that Sabrina knows a Doogie Howser and she’ll use this to refute the above. As a GenX, the folks that I know that moved to the NS were older than 35, we’re on a partner track, Specialist or we’re either a Legit VP or on the track (Pre-title inflation) and also had 2+ kids – YMMV

    There’s also less motivation to move to the NS at the same age as Boomers/GenX as they’re getting married and having kids later in life.

    “(2) says Millennials’ preferences haven’t changed, and that when they get older they’ll follow the same path as their parents did at that stage of life. Maybe. I agree that we’ll see what happens in 5-10 years.
    My anecdote is that I “should” have been one of those Millennials moving to the NS right about now for a starter home, but found the concept extremely unappealing.
    The housing stock up there is really tired. If that’s something you care about at all, the only things interesting are a MCM ranch in the ravines of Glencoe, a few buildings with good bones in Kenilworth and East Wilmette, or a newer place in Winnetka. Not everyone reads Cribchatter daily and I have friends who have bought something fugly from the 70s or 80s, or something with split face block and rickety construction from the 00s, but that’s not for me.”

    I don’t know you’re particulars nor am I asking, but it doesn’t sound like you have kids. For people either w/o kids or kids pre JrHS , other than someones preference there’s not a lot of reasons to move out of the city.

    In regards to NS housing stock, My prediction is that $ will drop for a while. At some point smart flippers/builders are going to go in snap up properties cheap, update them to the current trends and do pretty well.

    “Yeah, we’ll have a choice to make in 10 years once we have a few kids who are going to school. Maybe we’ll make enough to send them to private school, maybe CPS will continue improving, maybe in the future we’ll realize that the way we do schooling today has a lot of silly artifacts of past times when kids needed to be off for the summer to labor on farms and schools were architecturally designed to look like factories so that it would be an easy transition to daily life as a factory worker once you graduated.”

    And that’s the $64k question and would drive the exodus – will CPS be a reasonable option? Personally, I don’t see it except for a select few that are lucky or are heavy enough to get their kids into one of the good schools.

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  30. @Gary
    >”Why did they do this?”

    In this case:
    – no agents. so tangible financial benefit there.
    – no need to pretty the house up, pay for pix and staging, etc. They still painted some stuff white but that was about it.
    – fast close. they want the $$ in hand for their next down payment, so selling fast lets them buy something else fast without having to mess around with offers, contingencies, etc.
    – (speculating on their thoughts here, but since we know them personally…) the world could go off a cliff any moment. pandemics, riots, economic downturn… they have $200k of appreciation they can put in the bank right now, or take a risk by readying it and putting it on the market in a few weeks’ time
    – they love the house, they know us, so emotionally they feel good about it. they know we’ll love it and take care of it just like they have and that’s worth something to these people in particular.

    Basically a win/win/win for them in this case I think.

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  31. Yeah, without agents this could make perfect sense…unless they gave you more than a 4.x% discount 🙂

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  32. “more than a 4.x% discount”

    No way to know w/o price discovery!

    There are actually 4 sfh in “wicker park” (redfin version) currently listed for under $1m. They are, imo, compromise places for various reasons, but it sounds like mk’s may be as well, given sellers are basically staying in the hood, but in a bigger house.

    And, anyway, $950k (say), w/o realtor commission, staging etc, can easily be higher and better than even $100k more (and a selling price of ~$150k more, w/ realtor) 5 months from now for any given person.

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  33. Yes, the NS now has much cheaper homes than similar SFHs in Lakeview/Northcenter. The shift to the city among Millenials has been consistent over the last several years/decade+. I don’t think that mindset will change fundamentally – however, I know of several city dwellers with young families that ARE more closely evaluating their needs for private outdoor space, which they cannot afford in the locations they desire in the city. Whether it’s a flash in the pan mindset because of COVID, or will persist for a longer period, is to be determined.

    FWIW, I’m an “old” millennial who considered homes in Ravenswood, Northcenter, and Evanston in 2015 when I was expecting my first. I ended up in Evanston as a compromise between urban/suburban, and my commute to work downtown was actually shorter than places I was looking at in the city (Metra vs. L). So, for me, it made sense….And I’m VERY happy to have a private backyard and extra bedroom/office space given the WFH situation for 9+ months. Of course, others are making different tradeoffs and the amenities of the city certainly are still appealing to me, which is why I chose a nearby suburb that also had a decent number of offerings.

    Prices on the NS in many places are at mid-2000s (or even worse) levels….Evanston SFHs have held up better than others and inventory for reasonably sized SFHs walking distance to the train stations is still very small. So, I think inner rung suburbs may be appealing to a certain cohort of buyers with young families and two working parents. But I think those people are also still looking at city neighborhoods and expect the desire to be in walkable locations with amenities to persist.

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  34. “I’m a millennial buying my first house, closing at the end of June.”

    You just caught a falling knife! Congratulations! You’re going to need quite the bandage for that cut.

    “I’ve been really hesitant to put down roots in Chicago/Cook County/Illinois with all the uncertainty around increasing taxes, underfunded pensions, and all that.”

    But you disregarded your own advice and bought anyway. You better get a tourniquet for those missing fingers! You may have sliced off your thumb too!

    “They just need more space since they’ve all been home for the quarantine and have outgrown the house, so they’re looking for something bigger in Bucktown.”

    Like they’re actually going to tell you that they’re fleeing for…Mt. Prospect.

    “Statement (1) says Millennials aren’t going to the NS because they can’t afford it.”

    JohnnyU, you’re overanalyzing it. All of Chicagoland (other than Huntley), and all of Illinois, is losing population, and has been for a long time. Quite simply, there are too few UMC households for too many UMC homes. That’s why they’re not moving to the North Shore. Or the Barringtons, or Wayne, or the formerly tony DuPage suburbs, or any of the other UMC areas with long list times. Especially when you factor in the gentrification of the city over the previous 25-30 years (now reversing). It’s really that simple. Of all of these areas, the north shore has the most ‘baggage’ so to speak. They’re little more than bedroom communities with old, outdated homes and outrageous taxes, even by Illinois standards. And the people living there are the most ‘rich privileged’ and arrogant group of people in the entire region.

    But this trend isn’t just limited to UMC areas, it’s all of Chicago and Illinois. Take a drive through most middle class suburbs and you see half vacant strip malls, for rent signs on industrial buildings, run down apartment buildings that used to be nice, former decent hotels that are now seedy, and in some neighborhoods in chicago, the city itself owns half of the vacant or abandoned properties. All of these properties would have been filled or rehabbed if we had a growing population, like Texas, or Colorado, with peopel moving in, looking for places to live.

    “Whether it’s a flash in the pan mindset because of COVID, or will persist for a longer period, is to be determined.”

    COVID, Riots, Taxes, defaulting pensions, defunding the police. Chicago is a laughing stock of half the country right. It’s like nearly every day some conservative pundit, television show or radio show, and an audience in the tens of millions, railing, and mocking Chicago, incessantly. Rush Limbaugh has an audience of 50,000,000 people who tune in at least 20 minutes a week for goodnesssakes, and when he mocks Chicago, it resonate. Sure you can laugh at the haters, but there are tens upon tens of millions of them. Let’s just say that Chicago does not have a good reputation nationwide in many circles and it’s not exact attracting people here.

    which brings me full circle to my above comment, that there aren’t enough UMC households to purchase all the UMC houses.

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  35. “Chicago is a laughing stock of half the country right.”

    It is?

    Who is even talking about us with 97% full ICU beds in Houston?

    No one.

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  36. “The Millennials are between 23-38. So the vast or at least the majority aren’t at the earning stage where its feasible”

    JohnnyU, who do you think is buying all the $800,000 condos they’re building all over Lakeview, Bucktown, Ukrainian Village?

    Do you think that’s a 45 year old GenXer???

    And the oldest Millennials are now 40. And, yes, a couple can easily be earning $200,000 combined salary and “afford” a house in the North Shore with record low mortgage rates.

    Look at MK right here on this blog. He just spent $950,000 for his FIRST house in Wicker Park. And he says he’s a Millennial.

    There are plenty of engineers, lawyers, doctors etc all floating around. Look at Riz. Isn’t he a Millennial? He has a million dollar budget too.

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  37. “And that’s the $64k question and would drive the exodus – will CPS be a reasonable option? Personally, I don’t see it except for a select few that are lucky or are heavy enough to get their kids into one of the good schools.”

    This is just silly now. CPS hasn’t been a factor for a decade. There are thousands of kids who don’t get into the handful of “good” schools. Thousands don’t flee the city.

    It’s just not happening. Quit gaslighting.

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  38. “The oldest millennials are 40. What age are you thinking people move to Winnetka?”

    Right. And the largest “chuck” of Millennials (the biggest part of the Millennial curve) are now 28. They should be marrying and starting families soon, if they are going to do so.

    Should be looking to leave the city, where they’ve lived for nearly a decade soon, if they’re going to leave.

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  39. JohnnyU has some good points about the N/S.

    I’ve lived in the area for 18 years and have some thoughts, too. We live in a relatively middle class area not far from the lake but east of the Edens/41. We’re seeing lots of young families with kids move in, and although some of the buyers could be doctors/lawyers, none that I know of are.

    The homes on the N/S aren’t all similar. Yes, they can cost millions in some areas, but around here there are plenty of 1920s bungalows and 1950s ranches that can be had for $450,000 or less. Some for less than $400,000.

    Schools are great and I think that continues to be a draw. Easy transit by train to downtown also is appealing to many.

    All I’m saying is, you don’t have to be a partner in a law firm to afford it up here if you know where to look and don’t require 4,000 SF.

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  40. “Sure they can. Covid-19 culls the herd of baby boomers, the kids and grandkids inherit, and Bob’s your uncle.”

    The “kids” are 45. They will sell it too. But to whom? The “kids” already own their own home. They’re not going to live in the out of date parents place.

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  41. Everyone sees millennials as being so poor, and it’s true that right now they’re not going to be a huge force as far as buying on the N/S, necessarily.

    However, what’s easy to forget is these are the children of the baby boom generation, which is getting old fast and won’t be around forever.

    While many boomers didn’t prepare well for retirement, many did do very well over the course of their lives, meaning the transfer of funds to the next generation is likely to be taking place over the next 10-20 years. That could raise prospects for expensive suburban homes as millennials settle down with families and have some money in their pockets.

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  42. “Who is even talking about us with 97% full ICU beds in Houston?

    No one.”
    —————————————–
    Covid-19 will pass. Pension debt won’t. Whoever said “Oh Honey, what about the property taxes to pay for Cov-19 in ten years?”

    No one.

    Except maybe those looking t the corruption baked into the room rates Chicago baked into its hotel deal for Covid-19. Literally 3X what it should have been.

    Corruption. The Chicago Way. Even under She Who Must Be Obeyed.

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  43. “Who is even talking about us with 97% full ICU beds in Houston? ”

    Well, pretty much everyone. Because 70% of the ICU beds are NOT coronavirus patients.

    https://communityimpact.com/houston/bellaire-meyerland-west-university/coronavirus/2020/06/24/base-icu-beds-occupied-hits-90-as-houston-area-experiences-largest-daily-surge-in-covid-cases-since-the-pandemic-began/

    “The Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council has reported over 2,500 new COVID-19 cases across 24 counties in the Greater Houston area June 23.

    That is the highest single daily increase in COVID-19 cases in the area since the coronavirus pandemic hit the Houston area, according to SETRAC data that starts March 5; the second-highest came June 20, with 1,694 new cases.

    Out of 2,202 available beds in intensive care units across the two dozen counties, 2,000 are in use—31.2% of them by COVID-19 patients—according to the SETRAC data. ”

    It’s finally starting to hit the nursing homes there. I have a very distant relative in a nursing home in Dallas actually, and her home just got hit with it. She’s in her 70’s and in poor health to begin with, unfortunately.

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  44. “While many boomers didn’t prepare well for retirement, many did do very well over the course of their lives, meaning the transfer of funds to the next generation is likely to be taking place over the next 10-20 years. ”

    You mean like invest in real estate, price goes up!
    Or invest in stocks, and stock market rockets up!
    and invest in bonds, and yields drop, prices rise!
    also invest in CD’s, during periods of high interest rates, and make $$$! My in-laws had a CD laddering strategy as their only investment vehicle and it apparently worked out quite well for them during, you know, half my spouse’s life.

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  45. “Look at MK right here on this blog. He just spent $950,000 for his FIRST house in Wicker Park. And he says he’s a Millennial. ”

    [Another post] . . . “CPS hasn’t been a factor for a decade.”
    ——————————-
    Stop lying, Sabrina Z. It was anon (tfo) who cited $950k, and that was as a hypothetical. I have heretofore refrained from joining the chorus, but now I have to ask: Does the HAWT Market theory include fantasyland treatment of the facts, a la The Donald?

    And school quality is ALWAYS a factor.

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  46. Hi HD,

    I hope we can keep things pleasant.

    The time when the Baby Boomers grew up and hit the workforce was during the biggest and longest stock and real estate bull market in history. My parents are Baby Boomers and did quite well, believe me. So did my wife’s parents (born just before the boom) and most of my friends’ parents.

    Stocks have averaged 10% gains a year since roughly 1960, even including a period when they went basically nowhere from 1969-1982, and the dot-com and 2008 collapses.

    And you’re right, anyone investing in real estate in say, 1970, is sitting pretty now. My uncle bought a townhome in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in 1974 for the equivalent of around $100,000 in today’s money (it was a pretty big investment then). My aunt sold it in 2004 for about $2 million.

    So yes, if Baby Boomers and the generation just before them invested, they tended to do very well.

    I’m in Generation X, meaning I’ve been regularly investing in stocks since the mid-90’s. The stock market’s growth has been meteoric over that time period.

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  47. “The “kids” are 45. They will sell it too. But to whom? The “kids” already own their own home. They’re not going to live in the out of date parents place.”
    —————————————-
    They’ll sell the illiquid lump of cash for less than what daddy put into it? Why would they care? Daddy be dead. They saving grace is that they get out from underneath the property taxes coming for the pension debt.

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  48. “My parents are Baby Boomers and did quite well, believe me. So did my wife’s parents (born just before the boom) and most of my friends’ parents.”

    Check your ‘rich privilege’ at the door, buddy. My entire family – – excluding me – represents the part of the country that doesn’t have $400 cash for an emergency.

    It’s real hard to take you rich liberals seriously when you’re all so wealthy, so liberal and so fake.

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  49. Some good conversation (the blogs host excluded)

    @Dan2

    “While many boomers didn’t prepare well for retirement, many did do very well over the course of their lives, meaning the transfer of funds to the next generation is likely to be taking place over the next 10-20 years. That could raise prospects for expensive suburban homes as millennials settle down with families and have some money in their pockets.”

    Not completely disagreeing but pre 2008 it shocked me as to how many boomers were banking on their home funding their retirement. Not sure if this is changed since then

    @HD

    “ JohnnyU, you’re overanalyzing it. All of Chicagoland (other than Huntley), and all of Illinois, is losing population, and has been for a long time. Quite simply, there are too few UMC households for too many UMC homes. That’s why they’re not moving to the North Shore. Or the Barringtons, or Wayne, or the formerly tony DuPage suburbs, or any of the other UMC areas with long list times. Especially when you factor in the gentrification of the city over the previous 25-30 years (now reversing). It’s really that simple. Of all of these areas, the north shore has the most ‘baggage’ so to speak. They’re little more than bedroom communities with old, outdated homes and outrageous taxes, even by Illinois standards. And the people living there are the most ‘rich privileged’ and arrogant group of people in the entire region.”

    While I don’t completely disagree, IMO I think you’ll see the UMC’s cluster around better school districts – NT, Hinsdale C, and some others. I think places like Wayne and Elmhurst will be facing a long term decline

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  50. “Chicago is an example, it is worse than Afghanistan,” Trump told Hannity. “These cities, it’s like living in hell.”

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-hannity-town-hall-chicago-baltimore-cities-crime

    This was apparently just an hour again. I was typing my comment above not even knowing that Our Dear Leader was on Hannity railing and mocking Chicago. How many millions of people watched it live? How many like me will hear that comment?

    This is what tens of millions, if not a hundred million or more people in the country think about Chicago. And people believe him, because there is a lot of truth to it when it comes to Chicago violence.

    Laugh all you want, call them haters. But the truth is Chicago, you are merciless mocked by half the country, Chicago, you are a national punching bad for crime ridden crap holes.

    So, you know, this is good for Chicago real estate prices, right?

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  51. “So yes, if Baby Boomers and the generation just before them invested, they tended to do very well.
    I’m in Generation X, meaning I’ve been regularly investing in stocks since the mid-90’s. The stock market’s growth has been meteoric over that time period.“

    Agreed, however IME, generalities, yadda, yadda, yadda – boomers spent, GenX saved

    Boomers were also the first generation to embrace dying penniless.

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  52. “While I don’t completely disagree, IMO I think you’ll see the UMC’s cluster around better school districts – NT, Hinsdale C, and some others. I think places like Wayne and Elmhurst will be facing a long term decline”

    They’re all facing long term declines. Even the good schools district neighborhoods. There aren’t enough rich people to live in all the rich and formerly rich areas. They can’t barely even fill the elementary schools in some of these districts because so few families with children are moving there. This is what happens through large population decline and property obsolescence. The more livable north shore homes are mostly ugly spec infill anyways and the other homes are so old, no insulation, older piping, but look! Mid-2000’s Country French kitchen, please ignore the other issues and $15,000 tax bill. That’s why the north shore has languished. The farther out places have languished for different reasons, mainly that living on a acre with no sidewalks, a 15 minute drive (in traffic) from the nearest commercial strip, with a $18,000 tax bill on top of a $5,000 a month bill just to run the place (electricity, sprinklers, HOA, landscaping, repairs, pool and tennis court upgrades, etc) is just too much for most younger people. The city’s gentrification certainly played into this too and created competing UMC neighborhoods, but that trend might be reversing with the current environment. It’s pretty clear that the cities can burn down at anytime in this political environment.

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  53. “There aren’t enough rich people to live in all the rich and formerly rich areas.”

    Because they are choosing Chicago instead of the suburbs.

    Lol.

    Thanks for making my argument for me HD.

    On the $4 million and up category, Chicago set a new 10-year record last year and is still on track to hit that, or sell even more, this year.

    Go figure. Must be some dumb rich people out there who don’t know that the “cities can burn down at anytime.”

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  54. “Boomers were also the first generation to embrace dying penniless.”

    Wut?

    Boomers are rich. They had two stock bulls and a housing bubble. There are 900 a day moving to Florida.

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  55. “Because they are choosing Chicago instead of the suburbs. ”

    Yeah, we both agree on this. What’s your point?

    In a different world, where the chicago metro real estate market was healthy, we wouldn’t be talking about the north shore being left behind, because all of the population growth would be snapping them up. But that’s not the world we live in, now is it.

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  56. “Chicago is an example, it is worse than Afghanistan,” Trump told Hannity. “These cities, it’s like living in hell.”

    Yawn. This is all you got? This is just the same damn thing he said in 2016. Only now Lori has told him go take a hike, instead of Rahm telling him.

    And somehow, since 2016, the Chicago housing market has remained strong and healthy. Imagine that. And the city’s attracted thousands of new jobs to the Fulton Market and downtown.

    Oh- and by the way- he said in 2016 he would “fix” Chicago in one week. LMFAO.

    Time for the reality show to end.

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  57. “Check your ‘rich privilege’ at the door, buddy. My entire family – – excluding me – represents the part of the country that doesn’t have $400 cash for an emergency.”

    Didn’t you just get $1200? And your wife $1200? And each kid $500?

    If you’re still working, shouldn’t that go towards an “emergency”?

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  58. “ Right. And the largest “chuck” of Millennials (the biggest part of the Millennial curve) are now 28. They should be marrying and starting families soon, if they are going to do so.
    Should be looking to leave the city, where they’ve lived for nearly a decade soon, if they’re going to leave.”

    Thanks for regurgitating what I said

    You don’t have to leave the city for El Ed, Middle and High school is a different story.

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  59. “They’ll sell the illiquid lump of cash for less than what daddy put into it? Why would they care?”

    Right, johnc. That’s my point. This is why the North Shore is going to suck for the next 20 years. No one wants to live up there. They don’t want to live in St. Charles or Olympia Fields either. No one wants to live 50 miles outside of the city and take the train/drive to the loop.

    So the “kids” will have to dump it for cheap. Because ultimately, someone will end up buying it just not for what you want to get for it.

    Price depreciation will continue.

    I know someone who has been trying to sell his house in a far out suburb for over 3 years now. Is priced $50,000 under what he bought it for in 2005. Doesn’t want to keep lowering it but wants to move to Florida in his retirement.

    Eventually, he’s going to have to really cut the price and take the loss. Along with all of his neighbors. He is WAY out there. No Millennial wants to live out there.

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  60. “ Boomers are rich. They had two stock bulls and a housing bubble. There are 900 a day moving to Florida.”

    They also spent it on a fake it till you make it lifestyle

    Maybe they’re moving there because you can buy a pre-Mfg home outside of Orlando, live off SS and not pay Income Tax?

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  61. “It was anon (tfo) who cited $950k, and that was as a hypothetical.”

    I thought it was mk who said how much he paid. But you’re right, it wasn’t.

    All he said was that it was a jumbo loan. But that still goes to my point that he’s a Millennial who is buying a house with a jumbo loan. To act like the Millennials can’t afford a $500,000 or $1 million house on the North Shore is a joke and is just not correct.

    It’s happening every single day all over the north side of Chicago.

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  62. “And school quality is ALWAYS a factor.”

    Right. My point exactly. Which is why it’s no longer a factor in the GreenZone. Parents are fine with the schools in the GreenZone as the buying patterns have made pretty obvious over the last 12 years since the Great Recession.

    If they weren’t, we would have seen a mass selling in 2016 when Chicago home prices hit new highs with the record low mortgage rates, as everyone would have tried to finally get out after buying during the bubble. Instead, inventory has remained abnormally low for years.

    It’s still a sellers market out there.

    And, as I’ve said numerous times before, school quality wasn’t even in the list of the top 5 issues in the last mayoral election. That hasn’t ever happened before in my lifetime.

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  63. And, again johnc, I think we can agree that it IS a hot market in many neighborhoods and at many price points. And it’s not in some areas where there’s too much inventory such as million dollar high rise condos.

    The inventory will tell the story.

    Sorry that the reality of Chicago’s housing market doesn’t match up to your “wish” that it would suck.

    It’s all economics.

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  64. “There are plenty of engineers, lawyers, doctors etc all floating around. Look at Riz. Isn’t he a Millennial? He has a million dollar budget too.”

    LOL! Riz is barely an American. He’s a follower, once he realizes or thinks he’s on the wrong side of the smart and cultured white-people trend, he will will follow, but be as arrogant and obnoxious as always.

    I think, the hysteria we’re seeing on this page is because the white liberals aren’t yet processing the issue, but instinctively are feeling it. The POC hate whites and are sinfully covetous. The mask has come off and only an idiot feminist white or loser beta can’t see it. So, just like how the ghetto blacks now occupy the beautiful 3,000 sf greystones on the south side, they will one day occupy Gary’s West Town house. Just a matter of cycles and time. It’s fitting for all the white liberals that they will lose equity and their property. Demographics are destiny, and white women have contracepted and aborted too much, and drunk too much chardonnay. There aren’t enough “Millennials” to fight the trend.

    Riots are good for the lower class to maintain their prime real estate near downtown.

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  65. “HD always joked that “these self-segregating hypocrites will bring their poison with them” ”

    This is a lie, I’ve never, ever, in a million years said this. Never. FU HH. Ban this guy, he’s now straight up lying about this. Seriously, ban him. Shadow ban him, do something.

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  66. ““Check your ‘rich privilege’ at the door, buddy. My entire family – – excluding me – represents the part of the country that doesn’t have $400 cash for an emergency.”

    Didn’t you just get $1200? And your wife $1200? And each kid $500?

    If you’re still working, shouldn’t that go towards an “emergency”?”

    Not my family, but my extended relatives (excluding the relative in silicon valley that bought a ranch in the 1970’s for a pittance).

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  67. “Right, johnc. That’s my point. This is why the North Shore is going to suck for the next 20 years. No one wants to live up there. They don’t want to live in St. Charles or Olympia Fields either. No one wants to live 50 miles outside of the city and take the train/drive to the loop. ”
    —————————–
    They will at the right price point, and you ignore the desire to get out from underneath the coming pension taxes. Daddy and Mummy would resist price cuts (and you gave an example of the guy who wants to move to Florida) from what they paid, but the kids and grandkids inheriting the pile WON’T care what the ‘rents put into it, the chilluns will just want the cash. So, no, the North Shore won’t suck for 20 years, ‘cuz the coming price break will give people a strong incentive to move there.

    Not least of which will be better schools than CPS, which only teaches gang signals 101

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  68. “They will at the right price point”

    Yep, of course.

    If the Lake View SFH options are like this (which is nice, in the a-a for a solid elementary, etc):

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/3636-N-Wayne-Ave-60613/home/13383325

    But if in the near future you can get into a similar (but bigger, and with a yard) home in Winnetka for perhaps 1/3 less, the NS will sell like hotcakes.

    The Barringtons might well be a different story, but many of those estates would then be likely to be re-zoned, so they can get split up into more MC tracts.

    Note on that LV house: I just picked a random biggish SFH on the lower end of ask prices, and managed to find one asking less than 2003(!!!!) pricing. Their purchase price + CPI = $2.25m. They’ve been skunked on that, as an investment. (and yes, the 2d bath needs to be redone).

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  69. “The Barringtons might well be a different story, but many of those estates would then be likely to be re-zoned, so they can get split up into more MC tracts.”

    I don’t know how that’s going to happen. I think these houses will ultimately be dirt cheap (relatively) but have even more outrageous tax bills. Buy the house for $50 psf but be taxed at $5 per sq foot.

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  70. “But if in the near future you can get into a similar (but bigger, and with a yard) home in Winnetka for perhaps 1/3 less, the NS will sell like hotcakes.”

    You already can. All over the North Shore. Yet Millennials have not been rushing to move up there. Home prices still on the decline in places like Lake Forest, Highland Park.

    Maybe distance matters. The market gets worse the longer the commute.

    That being said, the Hinsdale commute isn’t bad and that market is awful as well.

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  71. “They will at the right price point, and you ignore the desire to get out from underneath the coming pension taxes.”

    But they don’t. They literally can’t even give the homes away in those areas in some cases. Homes selling for under the 1990s prices in many of the far out suburbs.

    Millennials don’t care. They don’t want to live out there. They want to be in the city where everything is happening: sports, bars, restaurants, museums, concerts and their job.

    This is true not just of Chicago, it’s true of EVERY city: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, St. Petersburg, Atlanta and on and on.

    Go check out the number of tear downs in the neighborhoods close to downtown Nashville. They have nice suburbs there too but Millennials don’t want to live out there.

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  72. “Maybe distance matters. The market gets worse the longer the commute. ”

    It’s only a matter of time before the Edens office corridor comes back to life. I went downtown yesterday for the first time since the riots and it’s still a ghost town, and it’s not because of the rain. State St is still mostly boarded up.

    Also, Sabrina, please please delete the comment of HH above making up a fake quote of me making anti-semetic comments. I never that or anything antisemetic like that on this board ever. I’ve never once even entertained anything like what he alleges or any other type of racist comment.

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  73. Hey HD, where’s your bitching about JB now as Chicago, and Illinois, has bent the curve and isn’t going to have to deal with shutting down again (at least not for another 6 to 8 weeks)?

    Cat got your tongue?

    Bars have now been closed again in Boise, all of Texas and Florida. I don’t understand what Arizona is waiting for. They are nuts.

    California will likely have to shut in several key counties like LA and Orange.

    And by next week, Texas and Florida (and maybe others) will have to close restaurants and retail again.

    Good times.

    If only JB had listened to HomeDelete’s advice to reopen when all of them did.

    Not!

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  74. Thank you sabrina for deleting that. You can also delete my comment asking you to delete his quote. I don’t want my name associated with any of his BS.

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  75. “I went downtown yesterday for the first time since the riots and it’s still a ghost town, and it’s not because of the rain.”

    There was no rain yesterday so I doubt you were downtown. State Street has mostly reopened. Macy’s is open. There are several Walgreens that remain closed, however, in the loop.

    Tourism isn’t going to come back and workers are still at home, so yeah, it would be quiet there if you really went down there (which you didn’t.)

    Michigan Avenue is slowly reawakening. But consumers are reluctant to go inside to shop, I think. Restaurants with outdoor patios are faring much better. They have been crowded every night but we’ve had good weather until today. No rain or storms.

    The facts haven’t changed about where corporations have to go to recruit the talent. It’s still the cities. Being in Lake Forest or Oak Brook again isn’t going to attract the 26 year old employee. And GenZ loves the city too. So that ship has sailed.

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  76. “If only JB had listened to HomeDelete’s advice to reopen when all of them did.”

    Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-lockdowns-save-many-lives-is-most-places-the-data-say-no-11587930911

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  77. “Not my family, but my extended relatives (excluding the relative in silicon valley that bought a ranch in the 1970’s for a pittance).”

    Are your “extended” relatives working right now? If not, and they’re in CA, they are getting $4,000 each adult in unemployment PLUS they would have gotten the $1200 each plus the extra for children under 17.

    So if they don’t have $400 for an emergency, whose fault is that? How about some personal responsibility? It’s not like they’re working at the Burger King in rural Kentucky and living pay check to pay check like some Americans are. Those are the ones without an emergency fund.

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  78. “There was no rain yesterday so I doubt you were downtown. ”

    I know, because it’s raining today, that’s what I meant, as inartful as it came out.

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  79. Wrong. The data shows that if NYC had lockdown just days earlier, it would have saved up to 20,000 lives.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-distancing-deaths.html

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  80. “Are your “extended” relatives working right now? If not, and they’re in CA, they are getting $4,000 each adult in unemployment PLUS they would have gotten the $1200 each plus the extra for children under 17.

    So if they don’t have $400 for an emergency, whose fault is that? How about some personal responsibility? It’s not like they’re working at the Burger King in rural Kentucky and living pay check to pay check like some Americans are. Those are the ones without an emergency fund.”

    SSDI doesn’t give an extra $600 a week. It’s more than just the BK worker in rural Kentucky. It’s the Bk worker anywhere in the county. It’s kinda racist to just say it’s the rural folk. It’s everyone of all races, colors and creeds.

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  81. “Wrong. The data shows that if NYC had lockdown just days earlier, it would have saved up to 20,000 lives. ”

    DO you know what else have saved even more lives in NYC? NOT SENDING COVID-19 INFECTED PATIENTS INTO NURSING HOMES. New York state has had as many patients die just in nursing homes than FL has had in the entire state.

    And if shutting a few days earlier would have saved lives, then Trump’s actions saved millions of lives when he shut down early. He saved millions of lives.

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  82. Oh, and the lockdowns weren’t actually about saving lives, even though that’s what it did.

    It was to save the medical community from being overwhelmed so that if someone was in a car crash there was no room in the hospital for them. This is the problem that Houston and others now find themselves in. They have reached capacity in ICU beds.

    The death rate from Covid has gone down the last few months as we figure out how to treat it. Thank goodness. But you still don’t want the hospitals to get overwhelmed or you have a bigger problem.

    Are you going to admit that JB did the right thing? Of course not. You’ll go eat out for dinner and not be concerned that you’re going to get the virus right now because Illinois succeeded. And that was directly because JB resisted the pressure from the morons who were calling for him to reopen.

    It’s WORSE for the economy to shut down, reopen, and shut down again- just when the extra $600 a week in unemployment is about to expire. It’s going to be really difficult for all those bar employees in Texas and Florida. Their state unemployment is shit. You can’t even pay the rent on it.

    That being said, I think it’s pretty obvious there are going to be further shutdowns everywhere over the next few months as there is NO national policy which is hindering us from getting the virus contained.

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  83. “Not least of which will be better schools than CPS, which only teaches gang signals 101”

    It’s worse than that, at least knowing gang signs will save your life in a community full of gangs. The entire CPS agenda is deconstructing intersectionality. There’s no three R’s anymore, if there was, the standardized test scores wouldn’t be abysmal. They’re literally teaching the kids how to read, write or do math, because that’s racist, it’s better to teach them about community organizing. This alone likely explains away the awful test scores when adjusted for income. kids can’t read at grade level if the teachers aren’t teaching them how to read at grade level.

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  84. “SSDI doesn’t give an extra $600 a week.”

    SSDI isn’t unemployment! WTF. That’s the problem though, right? Your relatives are all on it when they SHOULD BE WORKING. It’s being abused, mostly in the rural areas, because the jobs suck and they haven’t raised minimum wage over $7 an hour in those states so why work?

    This is a failure of our economic policy, by the way. The Burger King job should not be your career, yet in many small towns it’s the only option these days. Also true in the cities too. McDonald’s has said this. You aren’t supposed to work there for 10 years. At least in Chicago you’re getting $13 or $14 an hour or, if you go to Target or Amazon’s Whole Foods, you’re getting $15 and up.

    But this was what Trump was going to fix, right? Too bad he didn’t. And no one wants to address the SSDI surge.

    By the way, SSDI recipients got the $1200 per adult and the children paychecks too. So if your relatives are on it and they have a 2 adult household, they just got $2400.

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  85. “Are you going to admit that JB did the right thing? Of course not. You’ll go eat out for dinner and not be concerned that you’re going to get the virus right now because Illinois succeeded. And that was directly because JB resisted the pressure from the morons who were calling for him to reopen. ”

    No because he did not do a good job, and the abysmal figures and some of the highest coronavirus rate per capita reflect that. A surge of cases in some southern state is concerning, of course, but even with the surge, it still pales comparison to the damage done in shutdown states.

    “California will likely have to shut in several key counties like LA and Orange. ”

    You’re right, and they’ve been totally shut down too, I listen to a podcaster from out there who describes how they were shutting down.

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/03/malibu-sup-surfer-in-handcuffs-after-enjoying-empty-epic-waves/

    They were arresting surfers alone on the beach in Malibu. Even Lori wasn’t arresting people using the lakefront.

    The severity of shutdowns and the number of covid cases don’t appear to be linked, using science and data. I never said REOPEN IL. 4 am bars should be closed, and anywhere people are packed in.

    But there’s a middle ground between our draconian shutdown and being totally open.

    And just wait, IL might have a second spike too. He’s tooting his horn a little bit early…

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  86. $2,400 bucks, wow, that just pays off some cap one credit card debt, and goes towards increased utility bills now that no one leaves the house. I can’t believe you’re arguing in favor of the stimulus.

    Also, SSDI isn’t just abused in rural areas. Its abused in the big cities too, very much so. One biased 60 minute story from 5 years ago doesn’t tell the whole truth.

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  87. “And if shutting a few days earlier would have saved lives, then Trump’s actions saved millions of lives when he shut down early. He saved millions of lives.”

    Trump didn’t shut down shit, and you know it. The China flight shutdown only meant Chinese nationals couldn’t come into the US. 28,000 Americans flew in.

    Actually, they’ve now tracked exactly how it spread. As predicted, they mostly flew into Seattle, Chicago and NY from China. It spread here for weeks mostly undetected. By the time Trump halted the Chinese from coming in, it was already too late. The European flight halt was WAY too late and did absolutely nothing as they were coming in from Italy and Spain for weeks as well.

    But it’s interesting because they have literally traced it, by blood testing, from Chicago down to New Orleans. There was a woman from Memphis who went to Mardi Gras, got the Chicago strain of the virus from someone there, and then took it back to Memphis where she then infected a bunch of people. And on and on and on.

    This is the danger right now for Texas. Florida and Arizona. Once you get 6,000 a day testing positive, it is too late. The bar shutdown won’t save the pain that’s going to happen over the next 2 to 4 weeks. Ugh. Let’s hope there aren’t as many deaths with this outbreak. Prayers to everyone in those states.

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  88. Oh, and JB actually got the nursing home situation under control pretty quickly. I wish they had moved faster with PPE for the staff. They also needed to halt outside visitors, which they didn’t do fast enough nationwide.

    Nursing homes, just to be reminded, are mostly federally regulated. So that’s on the Trump administration. The lack of PPE right now, in some nursing homes, is also still the fault of the federal government.

    When history writes the stories of what happened this year, this Administration is going to look like one of the worst in our history. And there have been some really bad administrations. But they have literally gotten people killed.

    If only Trump had just worn a mask from the beginning and told people to wear them at all times. His cult would have followed. Instead, it’s spreading the virus now.

    So sad.

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  89. “$2,400 bucks, wow, that just pays off some cap one credit card debt, and goes towards increased utility bills now that no one leaves the house. I can’t believe you’re arguing in favor of the stimulus.”

    First, according to JohnnyU, paying anything more than $100 or $150 a month for utilities is outrageous. So if you need $2400 to help pay your electric or gas bill, then your house is a mansion.

    For someone who doesn’t have even $400 in an emergency fund, yeah, I’d say $2400 is huge. And if they have kids, they got even more. Another $1000 for 2 kids. It’s likely bigger than most people’s tax refund. Of course, if you’re on SSDI, you don’t have a tax refund because you’re not paying any federal taxes. Average SSDI is just $1258 a month as it’s based on your work history.

    SSDI’s highest rates are in the rural areas. In some rural Kentucky counties, it’s over 20% of the people on it. In Chicago, it’s just 3%.

    The cities have better jobs. No reason you need to be on SSDI and getting $1200 if you can earn $15 an hour at a retail job.

    Again, SSDI’s surge in the rural counties is the result of our economic policy failure. There used to be coal mining or manufacturing jobs that paid well in those areas. Much of those are gone. So other than restaurants/retail, what else is there to make a middle class career? In some areas, the good jobs are at hospitals but even rural hospitals are closing.

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  90. “A surge of cases in some southern state is concerning, of course, but even with the surge, it still pales comparison to the damage done in shutdown states.”

    Shutting down Texas for a second time isn’t going to cause damage?

    Okay Jan.

    Just stop now HD. You have no argument.

    And Lori didn’t have to arrest anyone at the lakefront because they had the police literally guarding the entrances so you couldn’t get on it.

    Oh- we WILL have to shutdown again. The virus hasn’t gone away. It’s only gone dormant. And the more tourists they let into the city from Houston and Orlando, the worse we will get it.

    Like I said, we probably have 6 to 8 weeks in the clear before our cases start to spike and we will have to close down some things again.

    And that’s all because there’s NO federal policy so that we could end up like Europe, which mostly coordinated and continues to have one policy with travel, mask wearing etc in the EU.

    With the virus there is NO middle ground. This is why China and Europe have been able to bend the curve so successfully. They didn’t even allow food delivery from McDonald’s during their height. It was supermarkets only. And you couldn’t go out into the street to jog etc. It sucked, but it worked.

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  91. “ First, according to JohnnyU, paying anything more than $100 or $150 a month for utilities is outrageous. So if you need $2400 to help pay your electric or gas bill, then your house is a mansion.”

    That not what I said SabrinaZ, Your statement that $500+/mo for a 1200sf 2BR condo was flat out moronic. We have a +/- 2400sf 1928 home w/ CA and spend on average a little over $225/mo, thats with a shop/garage. Hell, We didn’t come close to that when we were paying $0.40+/KWh (not in Chicago)

    Your foolishness is becoming rather tired and droll

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  92. “Boomers are rich. They had two stock bulls and a housing bubble. There are 900 a day moving to Florida.”

    Not true: https://money.com/this-chart-shows-how-much-millennials-gen-x-and-baby-boomers-have-saved-for-retirement-see-how-you-compare/

    I’m trying to catch up with this thread and responding as I do so forgive me if someone else already did this fact checking.

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  93. homedelete on June 26th, 2020 at 12:56 pm: Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No

    Dude, this is an article from April 26. I believe events have overtaken this narrative.

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  94. “Dude, this is an article from April 26. I believe events have overtaken this narrative.”

    If you’re using this:

    https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/09/872441984/modelers-suggest-pandemic-lockdowns-saved-millions-from-dying-of-covid-19

    as your ‘narrative’, then our conversation is over. The Imperial College London’s School of Public Health models are complete bunk. And the creator of that model, Neil Ferguson, broke his own advice to be with his married mistress. It’s June 6, and they’re still peddling the same junk science, and only Nature magazine is dumb gullible to print it.

    But, OTOH, if the lockdowns helped, then Trump’s also actions saved millions of lives, with his CDC guidelines, travel restricts and federal assistance.

    Our dear leader saved millions of lives!

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  95. Check my privilege at the door- got it. This wasn’t meant to be a comment about my own privilege. I admit that I am privileged.If it’s something shameful, then fine. I don’t have to apologize. In this country, the family you’re born into determines so much. I didn’t create that.

    But it’s common knowledge that there are millions of wealthy baby boomers outside of my own family, so I’m not saying anything new. Just citing the facts. I know many other baby boomers aren’t rich. That doesn’t meant there won’t be a truckload of money being transferred to Generation X and Millennials over the next 20 years.

    Also, I tried to be pleasant and keep personal references out, so I’d appreciate the same in return.

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  96. But, OTOH, if the lockdowns helped, then Trump’s also actions saved millions of lives,

    Where’s the proof of this? Trump’s only action was to stop non-US citizens from flying to the US directly from China. US citizens could and did fly in daily. Non-US citizens could fly to the US via any other country.

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  97. Madeline,

    So you wanted to stop US citizens of Chinese heritage from returning home to the US. Congratulations: That’s racist. Even racist orange man didn’t go as far as you apparently.

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  98. “Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No ”

    So then you think it’s a mistake for Texas and Florida to halt their reopening plans? It’s pretty clear right now how this thing spreads. There is a clear consensus: indoors, extended and close proximity, nose and mouth spray, accentuated by loud talking or singing. You couldn’t pay me to go to a bar or indoor restaurant any times soon and I’m not getting on a plane either.

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  99. “In this country, the family you’re born into determines so much. I didn’t create that.”

    No, but by not renouncing your wealth, and donating it to causes that favor the less ‘rich privileged’, you are complicit in a system that perpetuates massive inequality through the transfer of generational wealth. Silence is not acceptable, and no amount of virtue signaling, or signs in your yard, will save you from the dirty money you stand to inherit. It’s collective guilt these days and you’re part of a class of people that sucks the working class dry, and drains poor and underprivileged communities of everything they have. it doesn’t matter if you or family earned their wealth through an honest living, you’re still complicit in the inherently racist and evil system merely because you are rich.

    I don’t really believe that, but I read it everyone on reddit these days.

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  100. As for the whether or not Chicago is a laughing stock of the nation…well, that might be wording it too strongly but we’re certainly not popular. Popular looks like Austin, TX or Raleigh, NC. You see those cities consistently showing up on lists of the most desirable places to live and, more importantly, you see their home prices rising at the top of the pack. We are at the bottom of the pack. According to FHFA we are like # 97 out of 100 metro areas in price appreciation. The money tells the truth.

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  101. There are 2.5MM tested & confirmed cases so far. The US population is 328.2MM. So 0.77% of the population has been confirmed as having had covid-19. Now the CDC is saying for every confirmed case there are likely 9 other unconfirmed ones, so let’s assume 7.7% of the population.

    For herd immunity we need 70% of the population. So we’re 11% on the way to herd immunity. So it looks like we’re still going to get out covid-19 deaths. But it looks like we might have pushed the peak of the infection out further and will drag this thing on for months/years.

    So in 3 months we’re 11%, so looks like we’re going to drag this thing out over the next 27 months and still going to have 1.2MM deaths due to covid-19, or more if the hospitals get overwhelmed. Perhaps slightly (50-10%) less with the therapeutics they’ve discovered so far work.

    Good luck trying to keep the economy shut down or mostly shut down for the next 27 months. Good luck with that.

    But hey rates hit net record lows today: 15 year I saw now at 2.25%, 30 remains at 2.75% and I saw a VA lender is now doing 30 years for 2.25-2.375%.

    You can currently refi into a 30 year that starts with a 2 but if you time it right you might be able to in the mid 2s.

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  102. “In this country, the family you’re born into determines so much.”

    I absolutely believe this. But is it because we have created an evil system where the deck is stacked or is it because, like it always has been, your parents and what they teach you determines who you become?

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  103. “So then you think it’s a mistake for Texas and Florida to halt their reopening plans? It’s pretty clear right now how this thing spreads. There is a clear consensus: indoors, extended and close proximity, nose and mouth spray, accentuated by loud talking or singing. You couldn’t pay me to go to a bar or indoor restaurant any times soon and I’m not getting on a plane either.”

    No, I don’t think it’s a mistake to pause the reopening. You adjust accordingly to what’s happening on the ground. They’re doing the right thing. This might be the beginning of the second wave for all we know, and then IL will be slammed even harder in the future, since we have close to zero herd immunity now. Making JB look like bigger fool than he already is. I hope that doesn’t happen, I don’t wish the plague on anyone. I hope this all just goes away.

    And this wave that is happening is still small compared to the horrendous death toll that came out in early shutdown states as a result of their shutdowns and mismanagement. JB’s problem is that he isn’t guided by science and data, because if he were, he’d be using antibody tests in his data, along with on the ground management in the various sections of the state. He’s instead guided by faith – faith in his public health experts and their models. Yestrday he even said that his experts approve of going to phase 4. So he didn’t make the decision, the experts did, and he just goes along with it.

    But those public health officials themselves are guided by models, which are based on dogmatic assumptions of how viruses work, and fail to account for a lot of real world activity. Which is why so many of them failed miserably.

    He also make a fool of himself struggling to walk briskly in a tight group holding banners at the head of every parade and protest he could find. So, the rest of us have to follow his science and data and can’t play at teh public park, but his people, his voters, the ‘in’ crowd, they can rally and party in the streets all they want with zero repercussions. Science and data went out the window with his inconsistent and hypocritical behavior.

    In short, JB is tooting his horn a little too early on this one.

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  104. “Good luck trying to keep the economy shut down or mostly shut down for the next 27 months. Good luck with that.”

    We’re not going to need to shut it down because it’s going to shut itself down. Look at airline travel. No government restrictions on it but still down 80%. Disney pushing out reopening. Apple closing its stores. Only the idiots are out exposing themselves and their ranks will thin as they start to know more and more people who died from this.

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  105. ” But is it because we have created an evil system where the deck is stacked or is it because, like it always has been, your parents and what they teach you determines who you become?”

    To even ask that question is showing your privilege.

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  106. “15 year I saw now at 2.25%”

    I’m looking for a 15 year refi at 2.5% or less and can’t find it yet. That must be with a buy down. If not, please send me details.

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  107. I don’t believe the system is evil, but the idea that a poor person can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” is mostly a myth. I see some ways things could possibly be changed to make the system less-weighted toward the wealthy and to give poor people a better chance.

    In the meantime, I’m not planning to renounce what I’ve got, though I try to be generous to charities (I’m not Bill Gates, by the way, or even very well off compared to the truly rich, but I have more than most).

    What I do have, I’ve worked hard for. However, I won’t deny that my privilege made it far easier for me to get where I am. Just a fact, not evil.

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  108. So you wanted to stop US citizens of Chinese heritage from returning home to the US.

    Yeah, that’s what I wanted. It’s nice to see that you argue in good faith.

    What I really wanted was for someone to take this seriously and begin contact tracing people arriving from overseas back in January.

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  109. “I’m looking for a 15 year refi at 2.5% or less and can’t find it yet. That must be with a buy down. If not, please send me details.”

    Ditto. Conforming, no cash out, under 50% ltv, would do a 15 at 2.25% yesterday, if that’s real.

    Have seen it that low for purchase, but refi 75-100 higher.

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  110. “It’s nice to see that you argue in good faith.”

    It’s like you just got here, instead of being around for the better part of a decade.

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  111. “What I do have, I’ve worked hard for. However, I won’t deny that my privilege made it far easier for me to get where I am. Just a fact, not evil.”

    Renounce your ‘rich privilege’ now. Renounce!

    “What I do have, I’ve worked hard for. ”

    You know who else works really hard? My landscapers. They’re out there in the hot sun or rain, tidying up my yard, before driving off to another yard, and they come every week between March and November.

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  112. Maybe I should renounce and give all my money to your relatives who don’t have $400 for an emergency!

    But I agree – landscapers work very hard. Probably much harder than the average hedge fund manager.

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  113. “I don’t believe the system is evil, but the idea that a poor person can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” is mostly a myth. I see some ways things could possibly be changed to make the system less-weighted toward the wealthy and to give poor people a better chance.
    In the meantime, I’m not planning to renounce what I’ve got, though I try to be generous to charities (I’m not Bill Gates, by the way, or even very well off compared to the truly rich, but I have more than most).“

    I’m going to disagree

    As a first gem immigrant, started out as a laborer, carpenter and finally boilermaker (held cards in all 3 unions) and went to college. Expecting that one goes from poor to Bill Gates level Wealth is bullshit. Improving ones lot is easy if your willing to work. But I wasn’t born with a silver gerbil up my ass like JB

    I’m not in the mood to discuss people that are given a golden ticket and unwilling to take advantage of it. The sad fact is if you’re a minority and actually willing to Show up, you’ve got Union trade paycheck for life

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  114. Yikes.
    I don’t know law.
    I certainly don’t understand the market, but cikey!
    I’m representing more 1st time buyers on Chicago homes ? $750,000. I’ve got more open files on the north shore in the last 5 years. Crackers in Alabama may be “laughing” at Chicago. May and June have been pretty good for new files in our office.
    Hate on JB. Hate on the city. Whatever. Plenty of “knife-catchers” are thinking contrary.

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  115. Homedelete,

    I think you are in a unique position to share with us some social insights but please drop the sarcasm for a while. You are obviously doing much better than most of your relatives, as am I. I’m curious about what you think explains that since, presumably, you are all the same race from a similar background. What was different about your situation? I have my own theories about my own situation.

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  116. “No, I don’t think it’s a mistake to pause the reopening. You adjust accordingly to what’s happening on the ground. They’re doing the right thing.”

    So you admit then that shutting down saves lives. Yet, earlier you have stated that shutting down did not save lives. So which is it?

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  117. ““And school quality is ALWAYS a factor.”

    . . . . Parents are fine with the schools in the GreenZone as the buying patterns have made pretty obvious over the last 12 years since the Great Recession. ”
    ————————————-
    The Green Zones are too small to carry the entire City, Sabrina, and they cannot remain islands of excellence unaffected by the rot and mediocrity that surrounds them. As people have kids, they leave the city because of the schools.

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  118. HH,

    You’re a liar that libelously accused me of saying something I never said.

    I don’t care if any one here likes me or downvotes me. This is the internet and there’s room for all different points of view, especially about things related to Chicago real estate.

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  119. “So you admit then that shutting down saves lives. Yet, earlier you have stated that shutting down did not save lives. So which is it?”

    Shutdowns don’t save lives but they clearly slow transmission. That’s why I think it’s appropriate to put a pause on reopening when case flare up. There’s pretty clear evidence that the severity of the shutdown has little effect as on the transmission rate or the severity of cases. So shutdown a lot, or shutdown a little, it makes no difference, just as long as you maintain social distancing, close the 4 AM bars, and avoid crowds.

    “I think you are in a unique position to share with us some social insights but please drop the sarcasm for a while. You are obviously doing much better than most of your relatives, as am I. I’m curious about what you think explains that since, presumably, you are all the same race from a similar background. What was different about your situation? I have my own theories about my own situation.”

    It’s because I went graduated high school, didn’t have any children out of wedlock, and got a job. It’s pretty simple. Everything else I did is just a branch off the tree of one of these three things.

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  120. I think it’s clear that major public events, bars, social gatherings, and church services are potentially superspreader events. The real benefit to slowing things down is the healthcare system overload. Once you go above capacity I imagine the death rate skyrockets.

    As for your background…what about your parents? Were their values and examples different from the rest of the family? I know mine were – at least my mother was. She was the reason that her children all graduated college. That could only be said of one other of the 12 families on my father’s side.

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  121. “So shutdown a lot, or shutdown a little, it makes no difference, just as long as you maintain social distancing, close the 4 AM bars, and avoid crowds.”

    This is talking out of both sides.

    A “shutdown” means you no longer have thousands of people going into the loop on the subways and Metra every day. A “shutdown” means no one on the beaches. A “shutdown” means no indoor professional sports. A “shutdown” means retail closes along with restaurants (indoors, anyway.)

    If a shutdown had “little effect on the transmission rate” why not have everyone commuting in on the Metra after all? Because it DOES impact because you are shutting down the ways in which the virus can spread the quickest. And it’s not just through bars.

    Heck, 30 people just attended a graduation party in Texas and 19 of them tested positive. That’s not a 4 AM bar and that’s not a big crowd.

    Same with the outbreak that happened back at the beginning of the pandemic at the funeral in Georgia.

    And as we’ve now seen over the last 6 weeks, Americans cannot be trusted to do social distancing, wear masks and slow the spread. Only a full shutdown can do that. If the restaurant isn’t open at all, you can’t go. Same with Disney World, the beaches, the shopping mall and the movie theater.

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  122. “The Green Zones are too small to carry the entire City, Sabrina, and they cannot remain islands of excellence unaffected by the rot and mediocrity that surrounds them. As people have kids, they leave the city because of the schools.”

    Yes, some on the south and west sides may move to the suburbs for this reason. No one would blame them. But not all schools are “bad” in those neighborhoods. Hyde Park/Kenwood has some excellent schools. And one of the west side schools just added a gifted program.

    johnc, you don’t even live in the city anymore. Nor have you put your kids through the schools. I have. They had a great education. Same as the suburbs.

    Additionally, some city dwellers choose the private schools. I have some friends who went that route because they felt more comfortable. It worked out fine for them, as well.

    The schools are simply NOT the issue with the city anymore. You’re back in 1995. A lot has changed in the city in so many ways. Many neighborhoods have changed. The schools have changed. The transportation has changed. The commutes and work life has changed. I’m sure it will all change again over the next 20 years.

    But right now, the cities have seen the renaissance. Not the suburbs.

    People are not leaving the city because of the schools as soon as they have kids. It’s just a false statement.

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  123. “We’re not going to need to shut it down because it’s going to shut itself down.”

    Yep. This is happening right now in Beijing. Government hasn’t reshut the restaurants or the subway but the locals don’t trust that that outbreak at that market is under control. They’re scared.

    As a result, subway ridership was down about 40% last week and restaurants down like 80% suddenly. No one went out over the weekend as they have been doing the past 2 months.

    Same thing will happen in the US as you described Gary. Some restaurants are already choosing to simply shut because they don’t think it’s safe. Others are refusing to allow dine-indoors even though they can. Companies are deciding you MUST wear a mask in their store, even if the state or city doesn’t mandate it.

    In Florida, who’s getting the virus right now? Young people because all the older people are staying home and self-isolating.

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  124. “since we have close to zero herd immunity now. Making JB look like bigger fool than he already is.”

    Herd immunity would have been armageddon for the hospitals. You know this HD and yet you continue to say this stuff just to enflame.

    It’s really childish.

    Illinois continues to have the second toughest lockdown restrictions in the nation even though we have moved to Phase 4.

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  125. “So in 3 months we’re 11%, so looks like we’re going to drag this thing out over the next 27 months and still going to have 1.2MM deaths due to covid-19, or more if the hospitals get overwhelmed. Perhaps slightly (50-10%) less with the therapeutics they’ve discovered so far work.”

    Yet, somehow, China, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and even Vietnam have managed to escape this vicious cycle with NO herd immunity.

    And how is Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France and Italy all doing it while reopening their economies?

    And yes, as Gary said, the US economy will not have to remain mostly shut down for the next 27 months. Businesses have already made adjustments to the new realities of the COVID world. Leisure/hospitality most at risk though.

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  126. “So you wanted to stop US citizens of Chinese heritage from returning home to the US. Congratulations: That’s racist. Even racist orange man didn’t go as far as you apparently.”

    Wow. I’ve never seen HD say something as blatantly racist as this statement. Dang.

    Because we all know that those US citizens flying in weren’t only Chinese Americans. Those were the good old multicultural US businessmen/women flying back and forth from Shanghai and Beijing (and other cities) dealing with their manufacturing etc.

    Those were some nice folks from down in Peoria going to Caterpillar’s offices in China. Chinese Americans, European Americans, Hispanic Americans or Black Americans or whatever Americans.

    Trump allowed thousands of them to freely fly back and forth until the airlines themselves cancelled ALL flights out of fears for their crews safety.

    The President had nothing to do with stopping the virus from coming into the US.

    Get a passport HD. Leave the country. See who is traveling and how global the world really is.

    It’s a big world out there.

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  127. “I’m trying to catch up with this thread and responding as I do so forgive me if someone else already did this fact checking.”

    Gary, really?

    Who said anything about saving for retirement?

    Those boomers have PENSIONS! 38% of the older baby boomers, those who are 70 right now, have pensions. Lol.

    And, as I said, they had a housing bubble. All they had to do was buy a house in 1985, which most did, and they’re rich.

    If they were too stupid to not buy stocks, that’s their problem. But they literally had TWO bull markets in stocks.

    Oh- and if you compare the wealth of the Baby Boomers at age 35 with the Millennial, age 35, it doesn’t even begin to compare. Why? Because the Baby Boomers had no college loans AND they could buy a house in 1985 and ride it to riches.

    And they did.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-less-wealth-net-worth-compared-to-boomers-2019-12

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  128. “Your statement that $500+/mo for a 1200sf 2BR condo was flat out moronic.”

    Wut?

    I NEVER said this.

    I said I have paid $200 to $250 for electric and $100 for gas during the winter months when it’s been super cold (January/February) for a 1200 square foot 2-bedroom.

    That’s not $500 a month. And it was vintage with all that implies.

    Shall I post my bills, JohnnyU?

    Also, I have paid over $200 a month in electric in the summer to cool an even smaller space in a high rise with south facing light. (Brutal- by the way)

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  129. “A surge of cases in some southern state is concerning, of course, but even with the surge, it still pales comparison to the damage done in shutdown states.”

    Florida and Texas DID shutdown already. This is their second shutdown.

    Texas shutdown late and reopened early and never mandated the masks. They also didn’t wait until cases were in a decline for 14 days, as Illinois did.

    Texas listened to you HD. Illinois, thank god, did not. JB has a spine. Abbott does not.

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  130. Hey- let’s talk real estate.

    Anyone go to any open houses this weekend?

    I did. Tons of people at each one I went to. These were in the GreenZone though. All different price points. Lots of people are looking.

    Also, a lot of properties are now

    Under contract.
    Under contract.
    Under contract.

    Did anyone else notice how many are now under contract?

    Wow.

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  131. “JB has a spine. Abbott does not.”

    Really, really poor choice of words.

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  132. ‘“So you wanted to stop US citizens of Chinese heritage from returning home to the US. Congratulations: That’s racist. Even racist orange man didn’t go as far as you apparently.”

    Wow. I’ve never seen HD say something as blatantly racist as this statement. Dang. ”

    Sabrina, you don’t even understand what racist means. The overwhelming majority of people returning from China during this time period were not business travelers, they were Chinese traveling for the Chinese Lunar New Year. Anyone who has two neurons shooting in their brain knows that when Trump banned travel from China on 1/31/2020, it was during the 15 days prior to the Chinese Lunar New Year, which is called ‘Spring Movement’, when most of Chinese business shuts down so people can return to their homes to celebrate with their family for a month. The entire travel period last about a month and there is essentially mass migrations. It’s not serious to say ‘that’s racist’ because I slipped my mind to specially shout out the small handful of non-chinese business or tourists who happened to be traveling in China during the Spring Movement. That’s not racism Sabrina, there’s no racist intentions whatsoever in the comment.

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  133. “Texas listened to you HD. Illinois, thank god, did not. JB has a spine. Abbott does not.”

    Stay Classy Karen

    Illinois has almost 3X as many deaths. Is that what you’re heralding as a success?

    So “Nice Job Gov Silver Spoon”?

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  134. when Trump banned travel from China on 1/31/2020

    OMG, once again, Trump did not ban travel from China. Trump banned non-US citizens from arriving in the US directly from China. US citizens could still travel freely to and from China. Non-US citizens could travel from China to the US via a third country. None of the people travelling into the US from China were told to quarantine and non were traced. This was an epic failure.

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  135. Also, not sure why you are using a 1/31 date when the travel restrictions went into effect on Feb 2. At that point, US airlines had either already suspended flights to and from China or had announced that they would do so shortly, so the “ban” was mostly symbolic.

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  136. “OMG, once again, Trump did not ban travel from China. Trump banned non-US citizens from arriving in the US directly from China. US citizens could still travel freely to and from China. Non-US citizens could travel from China to the US via a third country. None of the people travelling into the US from China were told to quarantine and non were traced. This was an epic failure.”

    Except that, you know, it demonstrability stopped non-us citizens or residents in China from traveling to the US. You’ve insinuated, without evidence, that the ‘loophole’ of using a third-country to get around the ban, somehow negates the shutdown.

    However, despite your unfounded allegation, all the available evidence shows that the travel ban slowed down the spread of the virus and bought us time to prepare, which we mostly used effectively.

    Except that a handful of politicians sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes and ultimately killed tens of thousands. Nearly half of country’s deaths comes from nursing homes in a handful of states! I saw a stat, it’s probably old now, that 1 in 5 – or 20% – of all US cororavirus deaths came from New York State nursing homes. Take out all the totally preventable nursing home deaths in NY, NJ, MI and we’d have one of the lowest coronavirus mortality rates in the world!

    Also, Italy did not stop flights from China – because much of its textile industry is run by Chinese (many of whom travelled to/from Italy during the New Year) and Italy paid the price, as they became ravaged by the virus much sooner than the US. It’ like these facts are in front of your face, and you just can’t wrap your head around them, because the part of your brain that handles rational thinking has been invaded by Trump.

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  137. all the available evidence shows that the travel ban slowed down the spread of the virus and bought us time to prepare, which we mostly used effectively.

    This is nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence supporting this stance.

    Take out all the totally preventable nursing home deaths in NY, NJ, MI and we’d have one of the lowest coronavirus mortality rates in the world!

    Even if this were true (it’s not), so what? If I removed all of the nursing home deaths from Italy’s numbers, they’d have a much better mortality rate.

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  138. “Even if this were true (it’s not), so what? If I removed all of the nursing home deaths from Italy’s numbers, they’d have a much better mortality rate.”

    Lol.

    This is the same argument that was made in the 2016 election, and was made on this very blog, that iff we “take out” the California vote, Trump won the popular vote.

    Lol.

    You can’t just “remove” a bunch of deaths (or voters) because it doesn’t fit your narrative. As if those deaths of those over age 60 aren’t still deaths. It’s absurd.

    The majority of those in Texas hospitals are under age 50. Hopefully their death rate isn’t as high. Older people are being more careful and are likely staying home.

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  139. “Except that, you know, it demonstrability stopped non-us citizens or residents in China from traveling to the US.”

    So?

    It only takes one. THOUSANDS of people were flying in. LMFAO. That’s not a “shutdown.”

    And it’s not just the textile industry that brought it to Italy and Spain. It was likely tourists as well. You may not have a passport, HD, but plenty of Chinese do and they love going to Europe (who doesn’t?). Although, fashion week was also happening around that time so you had a lot of Americans from NY traveling to Milan as well.

    Also, if you see the maps where they have traced the actual spread, it was Italians flying into Miami, actually.

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  140. “Illinois has almost 3X as many deaths. Is that what you’re heralding as a success?”

    Yes. We have contained it- for now.

    We had the first case and we have the big international airport and dense city. We still have the second tightest restrictions in the country.

    Well- looks like Arizona’s Ducey has now seen the light and is also putting on the restrictions and closing the bars. Too late though. It’s already circling throughout the state. Can’t control it now. Ugh.

    After seeing everyone shoulder to shoulder in Wrigleyville over the weekend at the bars, Lightfoot is going to have to shut Chicago bars as well. It’s only a matter of time. I’d be surprised if she let them remain open through 4th of July but we’ll see.

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  141. “The overwhelming majority of people returning from China during this time period were not business travelers, they were Chinese traveling for the Chinese Lunar New Year.”

    Wrong.

    The Chinese had already shut down their own travel for the New Year before the US shut the flights.

    Reminder: Trump and most of his cabinet decided to go to Davos that week even as China declined as it was shutting its economy.

    They were clueless then, and they remain clueless now.

    Thousands of people have died as a result of their incompetence. And now that incompetence has extended to several governors. If only they had followed the CDC guidelines. But no. They followed the cult leader.

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  142. “The entire travel period last about a month and there is essentially mass migrations.”

    And, no, the Lunar New Year is a week. That’s all. People have jobs. They get on the high speed train and visit their families. They’re not taking the horse and buggy home. And then it’s back to work. Cop a clue.

    They also don’t get on a plane and go to Chicago in the middle of January for their vacation. Would you? LMFAO.

    The Middle Class DO, however, go to Thailand, Vietnam, and Bali. Like any sane person getting a week off for holiday, the Chinese also want palm trees and beaches. Imagine that.

    And what you said was incredibly racist. Dang. Said it just to enflame.

    Oh- and the Chinese had already shut down all of their travel for the New Year when they shut down Wuhan. There was no “15 days prior” bullshit.

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  143. Hannity is going off about murders in Chicago and how out of control it’s gotten. Viewership tonight in the millions Awesome advertisement for prospective residents.

    It’s always a good time to buy, or sell, real estate in Chicago! So many properties under contract!

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  144. OK boomer, I guess it’s racist because you said so. Even though I was accusing Madeline of racism for her bigoted comment. So that makes my comment racist. Ok boomer.

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  145. Hannity is going off about murders in Chicago and how out of control it’s gotten. Viewership tonight in the millions Awesome advertisement for prospective residents.

    Median age of Fox News primetime viewers is 68. Not really the population most likely to move to an urban area.

    Also, Hannity is a tool.

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  146. I’m not 68, I happened to catch it going through the channels on the teevee.

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  147. “ Thousands of people have died as a result of their incompetence. And now that incompetence has extended to several governors. If only they had followed the CDC guidelines. But no. They followed the cult leader.”

    Where does Cuomo fit?

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  148. “Median age of Fox News primetime viewers is 68. Not really the population most likely to move to an urban area.”

    I don’t know about that. They wouldn’t leading in the ratings if that were true is my suspicion.

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  149. “I’m looking for a 15 year refi at 2.5% or less and can’t find it yet. That must be with a buy down. If not, please send me details.”

    All the rates I quote for record lows are with the max buydown shown on Aimloan.com.

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  150. https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/special-report/chinese-new-year/transportation.htm

    The Chinese New Year Travel Rush — the World’s Largest Annual Human Migration

    The Chinese New Year Travel Rush, known as ‘Spring Movement’ (?? Chunyun), usually begins 15 days ahead of Lunar New Year’s Day and lasts for about 40 days (usually from mid-January to late February).

    China’s biggest and longest national holiday is the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year (CNY), and it causes the biggest and longest annual period of transport stress anywhere in the world.

    In 2018, it was estimated that Chinese travelers made around 3 billion trips during the 40-day Spring Festival period. In 2020, the travel rush will be from January 10th to February 18th.

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  151. “I don’t know about that. They wouldn’t leading in the ratings if that were true is my suspicion.”

    Cite #1: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-old-is-the-average-fox-news-viewer-in-america.html/

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  152. “Yes. We have contained it- for now.

    We had the first case and we have the big international airport and dense city. We still have the second tightest restrictions in the country.”

    In regards to containment, we should see if there’s movement due to the riots/protests. MN has seen a huge spike in the 20-29 age group

    And Texas doesn’t have any large airports? IIRC DFW is right behind ORD in rank and IAH is pretty good sized as well.

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  153. “I don’t know about that. They wouldn’t leading in the ratings if that were true is my suspicion.”

    Cite #2: https://qz.com/738346/fox-newss-biggest-problem-isnt-the-ailes-ouster-its-that-its-average-viewer-is-a-dinosaur/

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  154. I don’t know about that. They wouldn’t leading in the ratings if that were true is my suspicion.

    You realize Fox only leads in the *cable news* ratings, right?

    It’s been the case for many years that the tv news audience (cable + network) is pretty old. Cable news viewers skew older still, and Fox News skews oldest of all.

    ABC Nightly News gets about 3X as many viewers as FoxNews, and the combined viewership of ABC+NBC+CBS news shoes dwarfs Fox’s ratings.

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  155. “I don’t know about that. They wouldn’t leading in the ratings if that were true is my suspicion.”

    Cite #3: https://capitolcommunicator.com/nielsen-provides-data-on-median-age-of-typical-cable-news-viewer/

    I could go on. Suffice to say that your “suspicion” is bullshit.

    Educate yourself (and not by reading shit on Facebook and RT.com) Bob.

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  156. ” MN has seen a huge spike in the 20-29 age group”

    Cite?

    Looking at the data here (slide 5):

    https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/covidweekly26.pdf

    It looks like total positives are still way below late April thru mid-May.

    You may be right, but I couldn’t find w/ gthooi.

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  157. ““I don’t know about that. They wouldn’t leading in the ratings if that were true is my suspicion.”
    Cite #2: https://qz.com/738346/fox-newss-biggest-problem-isnt-the-ailes-ouster-its-that-its-average-viewer-is-a-dinosaur/

    While Fox does skew older, the have more viewers in the 25-54 range than CNN or MSNBC

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  158. “Cite?
    Looking at the data here (slide 5):
    https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/covidweekly26.pdf
    It looks like total positives are still way below late April thru mid-May.
    You may be right, but I couldn’t find w/ gthooi.”

    Scroll down a bit

    https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/28/latest-on-covid19-in-mn

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  159. ATFO –

    Scroll down a bit

    https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/28/latest-on-covid19-in-mn

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  160. Just to add, MN should be a week (+/-) ahead of the US relative to the protest/riots effects

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  161. Thx.

    From JU’s link:

    “People in their 20s now make up the largest age group of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Minnesota. That news comes after clusters of cases were tied to bars in Mankato and Minneapolis”

    So, that was very FoxNews of you to imply the spike may relate to protests, when the evidence indicates it is tied to patronage of bars.

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  162. “While Fox does skew older, the have more viewers in the 25-54 range”

    Which is of no moment to the bullshit suspicion Bob shared.

    They have far more viewers period, so of course they have more viewers in that cohort.

    This is from February, but should be pretty typical:

    “Among viewers 25-54, the demographic group most valued by advertisers, Fox was first with 587,000 viewers in prime, well ahead of MSNBC (317,000) and CNN (296,000).”

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2020/02/25/fox-news-posts-its-highest-rated-month-in-prime-time-ever/#5720b7197f81

    The US population 25-54 is 104,179,583. So ~1.15% are pathetic enough to watch prime time cable news. And 1 in 177 (56 bps) 25-54 yo Americans watch FoxNews prime time.

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  163. “People in their 20s now make up the largest age group of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Minnesota. That news comes after clusters of cases were tied to bars in Mankato and Minneapolis”
    So, that was very FoxNews of you to imply the spike may relate to protests, when the evidence indicates it is tied to patronage of bars.”

    Blaming bars for the uptick is an opinion. 130 cases isn’t going to cause the spike.

    Its borderline negligent to ignore that large protests/gatherings/riots effect on cases.

    20-29 YO Total cases
    6/11 – 5,528
    6/18 – 6,058
    6/25 – 6,854

    The 130 outlined above are about 10% of the new cases from 6/11

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  164. “Which is of no moment to the bullshit suspicion Bob shared.”

    Which was driven by someone elses comment that no one watching Fox would be interested in moving to the city. If we’re using age as a proxy for want to move to the city. Fox has more viewers in that demo than CNN or MSNBC

    Hence my post

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  165. “Its borderline negligent to ignore that large protests/gatherings/riots effect on cases.”

    I asked for a cite, you chose the cite.

    It doesn’t support your premise.

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  166. “Fox has more viewers in that demo than CNN or MSNBC”

    And a negligible number still.

    Plus, some number of them are journos and comedy writers trolling for material. Probably at least 1 in 177 of them.

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  167. “I asked for a cite, you chose the cite.
    It doesn’t support your premise.”

    The cite was the best graphical representation of the uptick. I could have linked to the source data (MDH) but the MPR graph was clearer showing the uptick in a single graph vice shuffling thru 3 weeks of MDH summaries.

    I haven’t seen the MDH put the cause of the uptick in cases being completely due to 20-29YO going to bars. If you have a cite to this, please let me know otherwise it doesn’t support the premise that the uptick was due to Bar openings

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  168. “Where does Cuomo fit?”

    Is he President? Was he in charge of getting us ventilators? PPP? Closing the border? Getting testing up and running?

    Oh, wait, there STILL aren’t enough tests for everyone to get one in many states.

    STILL.

    The incompetence is staggering.

    And then they sideline Fauci and Birx because they don’t like the message.

    Just stupid.

    Anyone who ran any other organization this poorly would have been fired years ago. Thankfully, that can happen in just a few months. But by then, the damage will be done. Dr. Fauci is now warning that the US could soon see 100,000 cases a day.

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  169. “Hannity is going off about murders in Chicago and how out of control it’s gotten.”

    It’s a re-run from 2016. Yawn.

    And what did Chicago’s housing market do in 2016 when Trump threatened to send in the national guard if he was president and solve the problem in one week?

    Oh, wait, Chicago’s prices were at record highs and sales jumped.

    Gosh…imagine that.

    You mean no one listens to Hannity or Trump?

    Gosh.

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  170. “the MPR graph was clearer showing the uptick”

    Yes, from about 20% of new cases to about 35% of new cases. Where the new case numbers are about 400 per day at both times. So about 60 ‘extra’ cases per day, or about 400 per week, of which about 100 were proven to relate to only 4 bars.

    But, yeah, that the new case numbers stopped going down is likely to be partially attributable to the protests, the looting or both. But it is certainly partially attributable to the opening up of businesses, particularly bars.

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  171. “But, yeah, that the new case numbers stopped going down is likely to be partially attributable to the protests, the looting or both. But it is certainly partially attributable to the opening up of businesses, particularly bars.”

    We agree

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  172. “Is he President? Was he in charge of getting us ventilators? PPP? Closing the border? Getting testing up and running?
    Oh, wait, there STILL aren’t enough tests for everyone to get one in many states. ”

    The incompetence is staggering.
    And then they sideline Fauci and Birx because they don’t like the message.
    Just stupid.
    Anyone who ran any other organization this poorly would have been fired years ago. Thankfully, that can happen in just a few months. But by then, the damage will be done. Dr. Fauci is now warning that the US could soon see 100,000 cases a day.”

    So Cuomo has no responsibility, gotcha. Yet you give Gov Porky Pig credit…

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  173. “So Cuomo has no responsibility, gotcha. Yet you give Gov Porky Pig credit…”

    I don’t live in New York. Presumably you don’t either.

    If Cuomo has “responsibility” so does Edwards in Louisiana.

    And Cuomo stayed shut down longer than all these other bozos so I give him credit for bringing his state out of this, the same I do with JB. They waited until the cases were on the decline for 14 days, like the CDC recommended.

    But last I checked, none of them run the Federal government.

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  174. Of course Cuomo doesn’t bear any responsibility of putting sick people in assisted living facilities

    You are a fraud

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  175. “According to FHFA we are like # 97 out of 100 metro areas in price appreciation.”

    Chicago ranks 93rd in FHFA’s Top 100 Metro Areas for 2019 — higher than Elgin (#99), Lake-Kenosha (100), even San Francisco (94).

    https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Tools/Pages/FHFA-HPI-Top-100-Metro-Area-Rankings.aspx

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  176. But when viewed over the last 30 years, prices in San Fran have tripled (+380%) compared to Chicago (+127%).

    The middle west is where the action is/has been: Denver (+451%), Austin (+409), Salt Lake (+424), Boise City (+360).

    Chicagoans can take pride in having outperformed Cleveland (+98%), Elgin (+84%), and Hartford (+61%).

    https://www.fhfa.gov/AboutUs/Reports/ReportDocuments/2020Q1_HPI.pdf#page=24

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  177. Just posted my June update. Market is slowly coming back. Really tight inventory but market is not “HOT”. In fact, market times are increasing. http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2020/07/june-chicago-real-estate-market-home-sales-still-suffering-from-covid-19/

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  178. I am a longtime follower of CribChatter. Rarely post. I have been following condos in Lincoln Square closely during Covid as I am contemplating selling my unit. Inventory is moving very slowly in Lincoln Square, especially compared to the last 3 years. For instance, this place with the link shared below has been on the market since beginning of May and is still on the market to my surprise. It was definitely listed too high, but to be on market about 60 days now without being contingent is really unusual for a 3 BD / 2 bath condo in Lincoln Square.

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5007-N-California-Ave-60625/unit-3/home/92327472?utm_source=ios_share&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copy_link&utm_nooverride=1&utm_content=link

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  179. Rates are going lower. The site I usually check was offline so I used another and found out Chase Home Loans now has a 30 year fixed conforming with two points for 2.50% for a 2.66% APR.

    Also if you have 500k invested with them knock another eighth of a point off and if 1MM knock off a quarter point. For those thinking why would you need a mortgage if you have those sorts of assets–this is how the rich stay rich & get richer–after being run through the tax grinder knock off up to a third of that.

    For those upper middle class buying more expensive properties than the conforming limit–well they’ll never quite get rich or not most of them.

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  180. “For those upper middle class buying more expensive properties than the conforming limit”

    20% down and conforming limit here is ~$640k.

    “For those thinking why would you need a mortgage if you have those sorts of assets (ie, $500k)”

    Uh, see above? Nevermind tax advantages, why would you put substantially all your assets into a long play on residential real estate? If those threshold were $5m and $10m, then it could be a reasonable “why?” to ask, and you’d have a solid point.

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  181. Double the downpayment (or slightly less at 39% at one broker I follow) and you can have no assets tied up in the mortgage and avoid PMI too in a Pledged Mortgage.

    I’d be inclined to think there’s no way you can get a 2.5% rate/2.66% APR on those (or less) but there’s not a lot of data out there on rates for those.

    Really shocked Chase had the lowest rates on that site I found–typically the big banks charged a bit more for the “privilege” of getting a mortgage through them.

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  182. “Really shocked Chase had the lowest rates on that site I found”

    Wells has advertised conforming loan purchase rates of 2.75 for a 30 and 2.375 for a 15, both with 50 bp upfront.

    Their refi rates are 3.125, with 25 bp, and 2.75, with 37.5 bp.

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  183. Wells rates while surprising for a big bank are around the same as the lows you can get from warehouse lenders like Aimloan.

    Chase’s, OTOH, are shocking to me as this is a big bank with an APR I’ve never seen that low before on a 30-year. I guess the market has changed recently where the big boys realize they actually have to be competitive on rates for those customers who independently research them & want the best deal. Used to be they couldn’t be bothered.

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  184. “Double the downpayment (or slightly less at 39% at one broker I follow) and you can have no assets tied up in the mortgage and avoid PMI too in a Pledged Mortgage.”
    ————————————–
    Let’s see how much of this is marketing babble:

    “you can have no assets tied up in the mortgage”

    —- Uh, isn’t the whole definition of a mortgage is that the home/property is encumbered by the mortgage? I admit that if we take “tied up” literally, I have never seen bankers rope down a house (in which case they might be missing a marketing opportunity for the kink market).

    “Pledged Mortgage.”

    so the property isn’t “pledged” in most mortgages, but is in this one? Or are you getting a Boy Scout as a co-signer?

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  185. It’s not marketing at all. The property is still pledged as collateral, but you can start off with no equity interest in it yourself but still have your assets allocated into other things with no PMI and no opportunity cost of the downpayment. The only regular mortgages with this feature are VA loans which you or spouse would have had to serve in the military to earn.

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  186. If we believe Sabrina than the housing market is a-okay and this economic downturn is super temporary and almost 1/3 of people missing their mortgage payments in July will have no adverse reaction on future housing valuations.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/08/32-percent-of-us-households-missed-their-july-housing-payments.html

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  187. “It’s not marketing at all. The property is still pledged as collateral, but you can start off with no equity interest in it yourself but still have your assets allocated into other things with no PMI and no opportunity cost of the downpayment.”
    ——————————–
    I’da thunk the banksters learned their lesson back in 2007.

    And I’m still waiting on what a pledged mortgage is, as opposed to any other mortgage.

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  188. “It’s not marketing at all. The property is still pledged as collateral, but you can start off with no equity interest in it yourself but still have your assets allocated into other things with no PMI and no opportunity cost of the downpayment.”

    Hmmm, that sounds familiar. It was one piece of the zero down, stated income, pay-option system that gave us the 07 bubble. So long as it doesn’t spread beyond folks with real assets, and preferably using margin lending ratio caps, *and* isn’t combined with pay-option (ambivalent on i-o, so long as there are periodic (annual?) appraisal checks), don’t think that it creates significant risk.

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  189. “what a pledged mortgage is”

    He left out a word:

    https://www.jpmorgansecurities.com/jpmpdf/1320745361188.pdf

    Not sure if you were just grinding Bobbo, or really didn’t know, but either way, there’s the answer.

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  190. “Just posted my June update. Market is slowly coming back. Really tight inventory but market is not “HOT”. In fact, market times are increasing.

    The fact that the market is not HOT makes it HAWT ™

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  191. “So long as it doesn’t spread beyond folks with real assets, and preferably using margin lending ratio caps,”

    These loans have actually been around for quite awhile but never became too common (very few Americans at the end of the day actually have real assets). All of them as a feature require using margin lending ratio caps. That’s why the initial collateral is so high in the one broker example I used (BofA/Merill).

    Where people have gotten into trouble with them is ie: in places like Silicon Valley during bubbles where the person is in tech and the market is heavy tech then the market tanks. Losing their job at the same time as the market tanks at the same time local housing values get hit.

    So yes there is risk, but not nearly to the same degree as the boom days of NINJA & negative-amortizing loans. Because, again, very few Americans actually have sizeable liquid assets (outside of retirement accounts).

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  192. @bob this https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/08/32-percent-of-us-households-missed-their-july-housing-payments.html is an extremely confusing article

    “About 19% of Americans made no housing payment at all during the first week of the month, and 13% paid only a portion of their rent or mortgage.”

    Ok I technically didn’t make my housing payment in July during the first week of the month either since it gets withdrawn on the 11th (two week grace period for paying mortgages and all)

    And are they saying that only 13% of people paid a portion of their rent? lol I find this dubious as well (joking of course)

    then there’s this gem

    “In April, May and June, the majority of missed housing payments were made by the end of month, Apartment List reports. Almost 90% of households had paid some or all of their rent or mortgage payment by the end of June. But with late fees tacked on, those households may be more likely to miss their next housing bill, perpetuating a vicious cycle.”

    like holy shit, poor people are late paying their rent every month? I am shocked…

    reading the rest of the article left me confused and totally annoyed… like it was written by a 7th grader

    smdh

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  193. “like it was written by a 7th grader”

    Your Wolverine hate is coming thru loud, sonies.

    Underlying survey was a surveymonkey of a supposedly representative sample. Somewhat dubious of the methodology.

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  194. If not quite an exodus, the pandemic has sent enough New Yorkers to the exits to shake up the area’s housing market. Longtime real estate agent Susan Horowitz says she has never seen anything like it. She describes the frantic, hypercompetitive bidding in the suburb of Montclair, N.J., as a “blood sport.”

    “We are seeing 20 offers on houses. We are seeing things going 30% over the asking price. It’s kind of insane,” Horowitz says.

    https://www.npr.org/2020/07/08/887585383/new-yorkers-look-to-suburbs-and-beyond-other-city-dwellers-may-be-next?

    https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2020/07/are-people-really-fleeing-cities

    Some interesting discussions of “covid flight”

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  195. The market is not hot. Pent up demand is diminishing quickly. Flight to the burbs is real. Will it last I have no idea.

    If I was buying I would hold tight – deals will come soon. If I was selling I would list and list low. Take the best offer and move on.

    There are a lot of reason to leave the city right now. Not many for people to move here. I hope this changes.

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  196. “If we believe Sabrina than the housing market is A-Okay”

    The housing market is fine right now. Low mortgage rates are seeing to that.

    But ask again in 6 months. If we see a deep recession here, which is getting more likely if the Republicans don’t act quickly on the next aid package, then housing will go down with the ship as it always does.

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  197. “I am a longtime follower of CribChatter. Rarely post. I have been following condos in Lincoln Square closely during Covid as I am contemplating selling my unit.”

    Thanks for checking in TomC.

    It’s all about price. If you’re listed too high, you will sit.

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  198. “The market is not hot. Pent up demand is diminishing quickly. Flight to the burbs is real.”

    It is?

    No real indication that thousands of people are fleeing Chicago for the suburbs because of COVID. I’ve talked to some realtors in the close in suburbs like Oak Park and Park Ridge. They’re seeing the normal contingent of people who are leaving the city for a variety of reasons such as being priced out of their preferred neighborhood. They’re not seeing an even greater number of people suddenly looking to buy.

    But maybe they’re all going to other realtors? I only talked to a few.

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  199. Interesting data point. My daughter in San Francisco. As a result of Covid and other things they are doing stuff they never dreamed of. Bought a car. Then decided last week they need to get the F out of SF ASAP. Found a house in East Bay that is not cheap (I’m intentionally being vague) that they will bid on. It is expected to have at least 7 bidders and will probably go at least 20% above list with NO contingencies. Crazy shit out there.

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  200. “Found a house in East Bay that is not cheap (I’m intentionally being vague) that they will bid on. It is expected to have at least 7 bidders and will probably go at least 20% above list with NO contingencies. Crazy shit out there.”

    You don’t get to inspect it either, even though it’s on or near that fault line.

    Good times.

    But Gary, what you describe has literally been going on in the Bay Area for the last 8 years (since the housing market bottomed.) There’s nothing new about it having 7 bidders. That sounds low to me.

    One of my friends bought last year in the East Bay (in Oakland) and they were looking for a house for about 2 years. Had to be priced under $750,000 (first time buyers). They were outbid about 2 dozen times and, at one point, had to take a “break” because it was just too hard emotionally.

    Finally got that 1400 square foot house with a 40 year old kitchen for $745,000 though.

    So, again, nothing you describe is due to COVID. It’s supply and demand in the Bay Area.

    This is why so many people simply want to move out of there. It’s no way to live. And no one who is middle class can afford it. Let’s be honest, even with record low mortgages, $745,000 is not middle class housing.

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  201. “This is why so many people simply want to move out of there”

    I thought everyone wanted to live in the big cities?

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  202. “Had to be priced under $750,000”

    That’s a different market than Gary was talking about. I assume he’s referencing something starting with a 2, or perhaps even a 3.

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  203. Just a data point from a seller. We closed our Wicker Park home this month. Our agent suggested we list way too low in May, we held with what we thought it was worth and got a full price offer within a few days of list. We had planned to leave the state last year with a new job offer, we stayed for the school year for our kids 🙁

    We are renting in our new city, both to get a feel for and to see what happens with housing in the area. Considering the unexpected turn of events this year, a smooth transaction without drama.

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  204. I’ve financed a number of client’s who have bought second homes this summer due to lockdown. A couple of them have been Oak Parkers. They are buying summer homes in Michigan / Wisconsin.

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  205. “Let’s be honest, even with record low mortgages, $745,000 is not middle class housing.”
    ——————————–
    In which case the millenials whom you think are going to save Chicago housing and be the driving force for the market (remember, Cribchatter doesn’t focus on what apartments are renting for) are too few and far between to sustain the market. So the HAWT market hype falls apart.

    Sing and dance all you want, but Chicago is circling the drain, and with tech canceling jobs and leases, Chicago is going nowhere.

    Maybe things will get bad enough that people will discover the South and West sides beyond Hyde Park, South Shore, Beverly, and Bronzeville, but I doubt it. Chicago North side property is headed for a major correction.

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  206. “In which case the millenials whom you think are going to save Chicago housing and be the driving force for the market (remember, Cribchatter doesn’t focus on what apartments are renting for) are too few and far between to sustain the market. So the HAWT market hype falls apart.”

    Because that house in Portage Park is $745,000 now? Or Jefferson Park? Or Irving Park? Or Galewood?

    Vast majority aren’t that high.

    And it doesn’t have to get “bad enough” to “discover” the South and West sides. Developers are building $500,000 new single family homes in both of those areas and they are selling quickly.

    The spread of gentrification has been the story the last 30 years. Yawn.

    Oldest Millennials are about 40 now. They will be reaching peak salary in just about 5 to 7 years. That’s who is buying houses/condos.

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  207. “Considering the unexpected turn of events this year, a smooth transaction without drama.”

    That’s great Kay. Congrats. I hope you have a great time in your new city. Renting is probably wise to see how things shake out and so you can figure out neighborhood etc.

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  208. “That’s a different market than Gary was talking about. I assume he’s referencing something starting with a 2, or perhaps even a 3.”

    But in the Bay Area, it’s not. Doesn’t matter if it’s 1,000,000 (as that’s the entry level homes now), $2,000,000 or $3,000,000. Multiple bids. All cash offers. You get outbid and have to keep looking. Some look for years. 100 people at open houses. Blah, blah, blah.

    It’s been like that for years.

    Who wants to live like that?

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  209. “I thought everyone wanted to live in the big cities?”

    Not San Francisco. It’s become hell again. They’ve been leaving for years. You go for a few years and then move on. Same with NYC.

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  210. What made NYC & SF hell again?

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  211. “What made NYC & SF hell again?”
    ——————————
    real estate shills

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  212. “What made NYC & SF hell again?”

    COVID, home prices and rents, horrible commutes and, in the case of SF, huge numbers of homeless including a several hundred person tent city in the Tenderloin.

    It’s worse than ever. But it always gets really bad at the top of an extended positive economic period. You would think it would be the other way around (a bad place to be in a recession). But no. The more successful the economy is, the harder it is to live in the big mega-cities.

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  213. Wow. The sizzle is really on in the upper bracket right now.

    This house has only been on the market for 22 days. $4.5 million in Old Town. That would be a new high price point for that neighborhood.

    I thought I’d have time to cover it here. But no. Already under contract.

    Wow.

    Sizzle.

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/321-W-Menomonee-St-60614/home/13344735

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  214. “They’ve been leaving for years.”

    “why?”

    “COVID”

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  215. “cover it here”

    …again:

    http://cribchatter.com/?p=24296

    Bang up job on the reno. Don’t love everything, but nothing wrong with anything either. Owners did a good job using the land trust (many do not), but I am not surprised that these folks did (nor do I doubt for a second the quality of any of the work done). Genuinely curious where they might be moving to–have to imagine it’s Lake Forest-ish or similar suburb elsewhere, as it would be hard to top this place in the city as a family home.

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  216. “Wow. The sizzle is really on in the upper bracket right now. ”

    How so?

    745 days https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1815-N-Cleveland-Ave-60614/unit-A/home/13346206

    767 days https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1358-N-Dearborn-St-60610/home/39579480

    Shall I go on?

    And don’t say it’s about price unless you are willing to say that Menomonee was priced well/ low.

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  217. SFHs above 3 MM 12 month moving average market time bottomed in Aug 2019 at 121 days. Now at 252 days.

    #DataNotAnecdotes

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  218. Damn! My previous post got spam filtered because I put 2 links in it. It won’t show up until Sabrina releases it. Basically I showed 2 homes >$4MM that had been on the market over 700 days. Here is one of them:

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1815-N-Cleveland-Ave-60614/unit-A/home/13346206

    That one has been on the market for 767 days and is not counted in the market time data because it hasn’t closed.

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  219. “Here is one of them”

    If 321 Menomonee is “worth” $4.5m, that place is, to me, at best a $3.5m house. Probably more like $3m.

    Not all will agree, of course.

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  220. “COVID, home prices and rents, horrible commutes and, in the case of SF, huge numbers of homeless including a several hundred person tent city in the Tenderloin. ”

    ATFO- covered Covid. For NYC – Rents in NYC have sucked for along time and have pushed out development/gentrification. MTA has sucked for a long time

    I think you need to update this portion of the HAWT Market theory ™

    If SF is a Mega City, what does that make Chicago?

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  221. I have friends who fall into the older Millennial bracket who are trying to sell a condo in Wicker Park to buy a house further north but are having a hard time, both due to Covid and shared deck (or so their realtor has told them). They lost the house they wanted due to not being able to sell – though if the house they want doesn’t sell they may rebid later for less.

    It’s going to be an interesting ride…

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  222. “If 321 Menomonee is “worth” $4.5m, that place is, to me, at best a $3.5m house. Probably more like $3m. ”

    My original post that got spam filtered made the point that there are plenty of homes sitting on the market forever above $4 MM. You can’t say that the market is sizzling because one home, priced low or right, sold fast. It’s all about price.

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  223. “My original post that got spam filtered made the point that there are plenty of homes sitting on the market forever above $4 MM. You can’t say that the market is sizzling because one home, priced low or right, sold fast. It’s all about price.”

    How many properties have sold over $4 million in 2020 compared with 2019?

    That will tell you all you need to know.

    Sizzle!

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  224. “SFHs above 3 MM 12 month moving average market time bottomed in Aug 2019 at 121 days. Now at 252 days.”

    Yep. Data.

    The third most expensive property to sell this year just closed yesterday at $7.2 million.

    And now this house is also under contract. We’ll have to see what the sales price is, but it will rank up there and will be, as I said, among the most expensive property to ever sell in Old Town. Similarly, in The Hayden, those penthouses set a new record price point for the West Loop but I think they closed last year so don’t count in the 2020 total.

    The upper bracket is HOT.

    Sizzle.

    Hottest since 2007.

    But as I’ve said, the upper bracket is all about the stock market. And that has come roaring back so the rich feel okay putting out the money for the properties again.

    And I never said that there wasn’t PLENTY of inventory. The worst inventory build is in the luxury category as that’s all that developers are building everywhere. We have the Tribune Tower and, soon, the Vista’s 400+ units to contend with.

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  225. “How so?”

    2020 could be a new record in luxury sales in the city. Already trending above last year, even with the pandemic.

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  226. “COVID”

    Yep. Final straw. Just ask Gary’s daughter.

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  227. I’m going to focus on SFHs right now because the condos can get tricky with new construction closings en masse. In the first half of 2020 13 closed above $4 MM. First half of 2019 12.

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  228. “In the first half of 2020 13 closed above $4 MM. First half of 2019 12.”

    8% increase! During a pandemic! That’s huuuuge.

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  229. “8% increase! During a pandemic! That’s huuuuge.”

    With the economy basically shut down and the stock market plunging 20% in the fastest sell-off in the last 50 years?

    Hell yes.

    Oh- and all the whining here that all the rich are leaving blah, blah, blah.

    NOT!

    Sizzle.

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  230. “8% increase! During a pandemic! That’s huuuuge.”
    With the economy basically shut down and the stock market plunging 20% in the fastest sell-off in the last 50 years?
    Hell yes.
    Oh- and all the whining here that all the rich are leaving blah, blah, blah.”

    Statistically insignificant event = HAWT Market ™

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  231. sorry for the pay wall for those of you without crain’s:

    https://www.chicagobusiness.com/residential-real-estate/suburbs-get-new-look-city-homebuyers?utm_source=residential-thursday-alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200716&utm_content=article1-readmore

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  232. “Statistically insignificant event = HAWT Market ™”

    It IS a hot market. You bears are laughable.

    That hotness may go away in the next month as the Republicans seem intent on making this recession even deeper than it was going to be by ending the unemployment boost. We shall see. They’ve been that dumb before, so nothing would surprise me.

    Either way, it’s going to be a rough 6 months for the country, both economically and health-wise. The low mortgage rates are only going to boost the housing market for so long. I would expect it to cool by the fall.

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  233. Anyone that doesn’t believe the HAWT Market Theory ™ = Bears?

    You commenting on dumb decisions is the pot calling the kettle black

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  234. I had mentioned above that my daughter was looking in the east bay area for a house. Here is one that they bid on. List: just under $1.9 and closed at $2.48 and that was most likely cash: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Alameda/1624-San-Jose-Ave-94501/home/1380371

    That’s what sizzle looks like. I think there were 11 bids for it. There is a sense that the buyers are a bit more competitive than they have been historically with more people trying to get the hell out of SF. My daughter wants out NOW!

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  235. Let’s see, 20 percent down on almost $2 million is $400k. Where in the world are significant numbers (meaning market sustaining numbers, not just a sliver of trust fund babies) of kids coming up with that kind of trump?

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  236. It’s all the tech money sloshing around there. Straight out of college these kids make $300K+ in their first year at the top firms.

    BTW, I forgot to mention that the sellers initially hoped they would get $2 MM for the home.

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  237. “…Where in the world are significant numbers (meaning market sustaining numbers, not just a sliver of trust fund babies) of kids coming up with that kind of trump?”

    Unlike trump fund babies oops I meant..
    Silicon Valley has a large number of very smart, tech talented (like Gary’s daughter) young adults, many of whom’ve earned huge paydays (some more than once) as a result of working for tech startups which subsequently successfully went public. And as Gary posted, the mature SV tech companies pay those talented young adults extraordinarily well. Instead of me commenting how unlike those young adults are to any “..kind of trump” I’ll look for articles/research backing up my assertions.

    Speaking of backing up where’s hd hiding? shouldn’t hd be taking a victory lap here given how accurately hd predicted all that’s going on?

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  238. The bay area/SV market also isn’t that huge. And aside from the relatively large number of people who do indeed have high salaries and have hit the jackpot with one or more start ups, the number of buyers who started their careers debt free and then got large sums from their boomer parents is huge, and perhaps market moving. Just the number of 35-50 year-olds who grew up UMC or better in the greater Chicago area and now live in (or did live in) the bay area/SV is significant.

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  239. “The bay area/SV market also isn’t that huge.”

    Sure, BUT, Alameda County alone had ~25% more $2m+ sales than metro Chicago in the last 90 days.

    Contra Costa County had over 50% more.

    Marin had over 2x as many

    SF had 3x as many.

    San Mateo County had over 5x as many.

    Santa Clara County over 6x as many.

    So that not-huge market (and that’s not the whole market) had almost 20 times as many $2m sales in the last 90 days as the entire Chicago metro.

    NY has (of course) been much slower in the last 90 than the recent past, and the entire 5 boroughs had fewer $2m+ sales than SF alone.

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  240. “So that not-huge market (and that’s not the whole market) had almost 20 times as many $2m sales in the last 90 days as the entire Chicago metro.”

    You can’t compare housing markets. Housing is always local.

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  241. “And as Gary posted, the mature SV tech companies pay those talented young adults extraordinarily well.”

    They pay great salaries here in Chicago too. You’re making over $100,000 a year at Chicago’s tech companies. So you get a husband/wife with those jobs and it’s not hard to see how they’re affording $500,000 to $750,000 with record low mortgage rates.

    You can still buy with very little money down as well. You just have to pay the PMI.

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  242. “Speaking of backing up where’s hd hiding? shouldn’t hd be taking a victory lap here given how accurately hd predicted all that’s going on?”

    What did he accurately predict?

    He did accurately predict that all the neighborhoods along the Blue Line would gentrify and prices would soar. So he got that right.

    What else?

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  243. “That’s what sizzle looks like. I think there were 11 bids for it. There is a sense that the buyers are a bit more competitive than they have been historically with more people trying to get the hell out of SF. My daughter wants out NOW!”

    Pretty houses sell fast.

    But can you imagine paying that much for that? Gag. But this is why I left.

    But Gary, every city/suburbs has multiple bids right now. Austin, Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah. It really IS that hot. And yes, Chicago housing is selling immediately too. I can’t even post on some properties because they go under contract immediately.

    Also, who wants to live somewhere where the only way you can buy a house is if you have $2.5 million in cash.

    Gag.

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  244. “Let’s see, 20 percent down on almost $2 million is $400k. Where in the world are significant numbers (meaning market sustaining numbers, not just a sliver of trust fund babies) of kids coming up with that kind of trump?”

    Thousands of people in the Bay Area have stock options. All the tech stocks are soaring. It’s no different than what happened in 2000 and 2007 with the housing market which was the last times prices peaked.

    Facebook only went IPO in 2012. That was just 8 years ago. You could easily have been in pre-IPO and be a millionaire.

    This is why no one else stands a chance and the Bay Area’s soul has been sucked out by the money. Artists, teachers, nurses, librarians, ballet dancers, musicians, retail managers, even doctors, cannot afford to live there and compete. Forget a paramedic, a police officer or fireman.

    The creative have left. They’re all in Austin now. Lol.

    It’s really messed up the whole region. Let’s hope that everyone who is younger and doesn’t have the huge downpayment that Gary’s daughter has, just says “no” and moves to other cities that are more livable. With Twitter, Square and some others now saying you can work from home for forever if you want, it’s now possible. And the longer the pandemic goes on, there won’t be a reason to compete against a $2.5 million all-cash offer because more companies will make it company policy.

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  245. “And yes, Chicago housing is selling immediately too.”

    Not it’s not. I’m posting my July update tomorrow morning and you will see that, for the most part, market times are the same as last year. Half of the condos are selling faster but the other half are actually taking longer.

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  246. I recently read an article from a mortgage lender essentially saying that 2.25% 30 years were the lowest the private market would support as below that it didn’t make sense & there would be no bids from private investors. Heck the bids on the 2.75%s today are likely low as well. 2.25% is about 0.5% lower than where they are now. But is even that in the cards if the debt ladder starts to collapse & bond holders of these MBS have to finally take haircuts, something that they were never even asked of in 2008 as they are supposedly sacrosanct? Can Jerome Powell truly buy them all at 100 cents on the dollar as Ben Bernanke did in 2008/2009?

    Prevent that debt house of cards from collapsing the likes of the Sabrina’s of the world so depend on to keep them afloat?

    Another ominous sign from that same website–it has FHA rates and it looks like they’re already at 2.25%. So in the upside down world that is big US government programs and big US government housing market intervention we have rates where people with a minimal or NO downpayment (FHA downpayment assistance grants remember?) get a lower mortgage rate than even people with earnest money and skin in the game who diligently saved up a 20% downpayment?

    Au reviour pro-lockdown debt monkeys. You’re definitely done for this go around. Do not pass go, there is no $200. You should’ve lived within your means and prepared for a rainy day, because it appears DC is out of ponchos. 😀

    http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/mortgage_rates/blog/949814.aspx

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  247. Just posted my July market update: http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2020/08/july-chicago-real-estate-market-shows-strong-signs-of-comeback/

    July is back to normal but August and September closings should be gangbusters. Note the last section on market times. No evidence of sizzle. Data, not anecdotes.

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  248. Can the sizzle last if we keep seeing hooligans on Michigan Ave. and elsewhere on the Gold Coast/Near North Side shooting and looting? I hate to sound alarmist, but anyone buying in the area now has to be thinking about it. I know I am, and it’s extremely depressing. What can the city do to keep this from happening?

    A guy murdered on Oak Street just west of Michigan. People shot on Michigan and Wacker. Stores looted twice in one summer. I’m very concerned about the future of our city. Lightfoot and police have to step it up.

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  249. gee I don’t know, maybe punish criminals? Let the police do their fucking jobs?

    Thats a start, but I know thats not woke so fuck me right

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  250. “A guy murdered on Oak Street just west of Michigan.”

    Dumas knew people were looking for him, and was livestreaming where he was (something he had previously said he was too smart to do). Just happened to be on Oak Street.

    “Lightfoot and police”

    Um, Kim Foxx, too.

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  251. Yeah – I know the Oak Street one wasn’t random, but in broad daylight on the Gold Coast catches my attention.

    Punish criminals, let police do their jobs. Agreed, sonies. I’m not sure how anyone could be against that. People I know just had their businesses trashed by these SOBs. Someone is organizing this, I’m sure. It’s not random. Perpetrators need to be rounded up.

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  252. Just spoke to someone whose parents own a condo in Old Town and winter in Fl. Given everything that has been happening this summer they were already considering a move and after last night they are not longer thinking about it – – they plan to sell. They probably aren’t alone. I think there are a lot of folks who keep a Chicago home because they live here part time and are now too fed up. I am wondering if there is about to be a glut of new listings that push prices down or potentially end up as rentals since the owners have the ability to vacate the premises immediately. I sense there could be an opportunity on the horizon for someone with a lot of cash on hand.

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  253. I got a text this morning from some long term clients and they had been thinking about leaving Illinois and now they want to seriously pursue it.

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  254. Add me to the list. My wife and I have been dreaming for years of buying a downtown condo once we’re empty nesters – less than two years from now. With the way things are going, in both Chicago and the country, now we’re talking about Ireland or Canada.

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  255. “I am wondering if there is about to be a glut of new listings that push prices down or potentially end up as rentals since the owners have the ability to vacate the premises immediately.”

    That’s pretty dramatic The Cat. To have a “glut” of new listings you would literally need hundreds, if not thousands, to come on the market. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen as many are fed up, but the inventory is so low, you would need a huge surge to make any kind of impact in prices. Because you’re assuming no one is buying, which isn’t the case.

    Also, the empty nesters who are selling and moving to Florida are Baby Boomers or even The Silent Generation. There was always going to be turnover among those homeowners. They are going to want to retire to warmer climates or cheaper cities without our property taxes.

    The only question was, what will Millennials be buying?

    The entire Gold Coast will be turning over ownership of its housing stock in the next decade. The average age is the Baby Boomers or Silent Generation. But do younger people want to live there? I don’t know. It will be interesting to watch.

    Certain neighborhoods could see more inventory than others as a result.

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  256. “Can the sizzle last if we keep seeing hooligans on Michigan Ave. and elsewhere on the Gold Coast/Near North Side shooting and looting?”

    No. People will move to the West Loop, Lakeview, or other neighborhoods where there hasn’t been looting.

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  257. “Not it’s not. I’m posting my July update tomorrow morning and you will see that, for the most part, market times are the same as last year. Half of the condos are selling faster but the other half are actually taking longer.”

    Who said condos?

    SFH and townhouses are hot. People want outdoor space, Gary. Just like your daughter.

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  258. I was going to do a post on this lovely vintage condo in Lakeview. I don’t think we’ve ever discussed this building before but it is right next door to the “Paris in Chicago” building we’ve chattered about several times.

    It too has garage parking behind the building and guest parking (key for this neighborhood).

    But, alas, it just went under contract. Took 46 days, but that’s pretty fast for a property like this.

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/460-W-Barry-Ave-60657/unit-2E/home/12715704

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  259. “With the way things are going, in both Chicago and the country, now we’re talking about Ireland or Canada.”

    It’s really hard to live in a foreign country full time, even if they speak English. I admire immigrants so much. It’s not easy. Homesickness sets in.

    Same with those who think they’ll be happy moving to a Caribbean island. They’ve said the average time living there is just 2 years because most people get bored with “island life.” But that’s a different discussion.

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  260. “Because you’re assuming no one is buying, which isn’t the case.”

    At this exact second.

    Next week may be different

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  261. Hey everyone, it’s been a while – thought I’d chime in on this topic.

    Between the shutdowns, the gun violence, and the on/off looting and BS all over downtown and also not too far from us in the western end of LP, the wife and I have definitely committed to moving..We’re one of the last few families we know that have stuck it out in the city, but it truly isn’t worth it anymore.

    With the kind of taxes I’m paying, I’ll take the trade off for fewer dining and cultural options and move to Hinsdale or wherever. Wont have to worry about private schools either.

    I commend the couples with kids that hack it out in the city. It’s been years now and it just gets harder every year.

    On the real estate side, our realtor advised either selling now or waiting until next summer…I genuinely believe we will see a shift in millennials with kids moving back to the suburbs. Single people or people without kids is a different story.

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  262. Sabrina, you can’t have sizzle if there’s no commercial sector anymore because of the looting, west loop or no.

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  263. “Who said condos?

    SFH and townhouses are hot. People want outdoor space, Gary.”

    Take a look at my update. The only reason I mentioned condos (and that was actually shorthand for condos and townhomes aka attached housing) was because there was a drop in the median market time, which means half the attached units are selling faster (but the other half taking longer). However, if you look at detached (aka SFHs) the median market time did not drop. In other words, no sizzle.

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  264. Look at where Illinois falls. https://smartasset.com/mortgage/where-rich-millennials-are-moving-2020

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  265. I guess for wealthy Millennials the appeal of Illinois is becoming more selective.

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  266. “I was going to do a post on this lovely vintage condo in Lakeview. I don’t think we’ve ever discussed this building before but it is right next door to the “Paris in Chicago” building we’ve chattered about several times.

    It too has garage parking behind the building and guest parking (key for this neighborhood).

    But, alas, it just went under contract. Took 46 days, but that’s pretty fast for a property like this.

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/460-W-Barry-Ave-60657/unit-2E/home/12715704

    This is my old hood. This home has been on and off the mkt for over 2 years with price cut after price cut.

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  267. Good point. It was on the market last year and went under contract when listed at 675 and then got reactivated. Wonder if it was an appraisal problem. Couldn’t resell it so let it die Jan 1. Brought it back at 675 in May and then relisted at 650K 6 weeks later. This go round it took 91 days to sell, not 46.

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  268. Very indicative of a HAWT Market ™

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  269. ” This home has been on and off the mkt for over 2 years ”

    Actual listing time? About 18.5 months on the market, over a period of ~27 months.

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  270. Just FYI I was on Zillow just now looking up condos in the 60611 zip code and a huge glut of new offerings have come online in just the last 24 hours. Not sure if it’s connected to the looting. Probably too soon for that to be reflected.

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  271. “Just FYI I was on Zillow just now looking up condos in the 60611 zip code and a huge glut of new offerings have come online in just the last 24 hours.”

    What does that mean Dan #2?

    How many are re-lists of previously listed units?

    Are there new construction listings that developers are putting online now?

    How does today’s inventory compare to last year’s inventory at this time? Although that will be skewed because of the pandemic as the spring selling season has been pushed forward about 2-3 months this year so it’s not a complete apple to apple look.

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  272. “On the real estate side, our realtor advised either selling now or waiting until next summer…I genuinely believe we will see a shift in millennials with kids moving back to the suburbs. Single people or people without kids is a different story.”

    Most Millennials cannot afford the north side of the city, so yes, many with children will be heading to where they can still buy a house for $300,000 or $400,000, which is what they can afford.

    Most of you on this site don’t realize that we basically talk housing for the top 5% of wage earners. The vast majority of people, even those Millennials living near Wrigley Field and are making $125,,000 to $200,000 joint salary (for a couple) will be stretched to afford a townhouse on the north side and can’t afford a house there. If they want the house, they go to Jefferson Park, Portage Park etc. OR they just go to Oak Park, the western suburbs along BNSF or any of the other train line suburbs.

    Riz may be saying that he’s one of the “last few families” that have stayed in the city but he’ll just be replaced by others.

    There’s no indication (not yet) that school enrollment is plunging in the grade schools on the north side of the city. It’s just not happening.

    But we’ve talked many times in the past 13 years of this blog of the difficulty of living in the city with kids. The possibility that their child won’t get into a magnet high school is a big worry for many. The inability to get into Park District programs because of overcrowding is another. And on and on of all the little things that make it difficult.

    And some will simply want more space now. Unless you’re in a part of the city with the wider lots, the standard lot might not be enough for some.

    99% of Millennials aren’t doctors like Riz. They still have school debt. They are making middle class salaries. The city has gotten too expensive for them if they want to buy homes.

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  273. “There’s no indication (not yet) that school enrollment is plunging in the grade schools on the north side of the city. It’s just not happening.”

    This is next level dumb. “school” is still 4 weeks away, and is going to be a farce and a half, which means that even if it happens, plunging enrollment won’t necessarily be an indicator of people leaving the city. The *earliest* we’d have a real view on “plunging enrollments” would be October 4, 2021, the 20th day of school, SY 21-22.

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  274. Here’s another one. Under contract in 4 days. I was going to crib on it, but can’t. I wasn’t quick enough.

    It does have parking, which is a big selling point for this block/neighborhood.

    But it looks like at least some Millennials aren’t fleeing, as that’s who should be buying a property like this. At least not Lakeview if they’re still diving in on $489,000 condos.

    https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/435-W-Surf-St-60657/unit-4A/home/13372582

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