Grills and chairs waiting patiently outside their condos

This morning Standard & Poor?s Case-Shiller Home Price Indices numbers were released and the results are surprisingly better than expected. In the Chicago condo market, prices showed an increase of 1.1% from May 2009 to June 2009. Over recent months we have seen the leveling off of pricing. This current report shows signs the Chicago housing market is on an uptick. It will probably be gradual but will this increase get the buyers setting on the bench waiting for the bottom to fall out back engaged in the market?

Several factors are contributing to prices being on the upswing. Supply and demand?less inventory always drives up prices in any industry. Property owners are holding off on listing, a significant number of new developments are not getting built or are converting to rental units and there is an increase in pending sales. Although there are fewer buyers right now, they are better quality: they have higher down payments then in the past. They have been forced to because of the changes in lending guidelines.

Will the Signs that Home Prices are Starting to Go Up Get the Buyers to Buy?

Over the last few weeks, I have found that several of the buyers out there looking have reemerged. In communicating with other Realtors® they are experiencing the same. Buyers were looking six months to over a year ago. They are now in a position to move forward on their new home purchase. Some had to wait until their current home sold and it finally did. Others needed to save more money and clean up their credit. The rest where just waiting to see how low it will go. From today?s numbers I think it “went.”

We would like to thank Sharat Ganapati for kindly sharing today’s photo via the Creative Common’s license.