The Chicago Tribune weighs in on February’s housing numbers on the front page of the paper.
Chicagoland saw better sales numbers than the rest of the nation. But it sounds like high prices and difficulty getting loans are still part of the problem. From the Chicago Tribune:
“It’s a little encouraging,” said Mike Larson, an analyst at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla. “For the first time, we see some buyers are responding to price cuts. We’ve had prices falling for some time, and it hasn’t made much difference in terms of volume. But in the month of February, there’s clearly some reaction, some bargain-hunters who were willing to get off the fence.”
Sallee and others agree that the monthly data doesn’t mean the market has turned around.
“It is good news, but it’s February,” said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor’s. “Not a lot of people buy houses in February. While it’s good news, you shouldn’t take it too seriously until we get April or May data.”
Chicago-area real estate agents said they’re seeing increased activity, though with mixed results because more stringent lending standards are complicating some deals.
“I do see more buyers now, maybe within the last couple of weeks,” said Oak Park agent Donna Karpavicius. “Weather has been a factor that kept people away. But we have had good open houses and people are out looking.”
She said she hasn’t seen many prices drop significantly in her area, but they get attention when they do.
“Last month I had a property close in Franklin Park,” she said. “They were first-time buyers who wouldn’t have been able to afford a house like this last year.
“This home had been on the market for $245,000. It came off the market and went back on for $209,900, as a foreclosure. The people had bought it for $255,000 a year ago.
“My people pounced on it.”
Francisco Ybarra hopes a price reduction to $699,000 from $719,000—plus a little jazz —will land a buyer for his West Town neighborhood rowhouse.
His agent, Sandesh Bilgi, hired jazz musicians to entertain at an agents’ open house cocktail party last week to raise the property’s profile.
“[At the height of the housing boom] we wouldn’t have needed to do it; it would have been under contract before I could even plan an event,” Bilgi said.
Ybarra said he’s confident the property will sell, though he agreed with Karpavicius that the mortgage industry’s more rigorous standards—bigger down payments, stronger credit scores—have derailed some deals despite attractive interest rates.
“I think the market can only get worse if people can’t get loans,” said Ybarra. “People want to buy houses, but they’re just not giving loans.”
