The Good News

Chicago's Air and Water Show will also be going up and down all weekend

As we reported two days ago, Chicago and Illinois are on a roll; we’ve had five consecutive months of increased month-on-month home sales. It turns out that we are not alone. Many news outlets are reporting that home sales grew in the second quarter in the majority of the country: 39 states saw housing sales increasing a combined total of 3.8% over the first quarter of this year. However, these numbers are about 3 percent below last year’s numbers. Idaho, Hawaii, New York, Wisconsin and Nebraska are doing quite well with 20 percent or more increases in sales. On the other end of the scale, Alaska, Wyoming, California, Colorado and Michigan have all dropped by at least 6 percent.

Bad News #1: Housing Prices are Down

Nationally 129 out of 155 metro areas have seen price drops with the median sales prices down almost 16 percent when compared to last year. Fort Myers, Florida was hit the hardest with prices down 53 percent. Other big price losers are Phoenix and Las Vegas. However, there are cities that are seeing price increases: Davenport, Iowa saw 31 percent increases and Cumberland, Maryland saw 22 percent.

Bad News #2: Housing Foreclosures are Up

More than one third of all sales in the second quarter were of foreclosures or distressed properties. Foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac Inc. is reporting that one out of every 355 homes (a total of 360,149) received a default or auction notice or were seized last month. That is the highest the company has seen since it began keeping record in January 2005. This is the third record-breaking month they have seen in the last five months.

Economists Upbeat

National Association of Realtors® chief economist, Lawrence Yun is quoted as saying that the sales increases are, “a hopeful sign for the economy.” More and more economists are saying that the worst of the real estate recession is behind us even though foreclosures will likely continue to rise for the next year.

We’d like to thank cikaga jamie for sharing today’s photo via the Creative Commons License.