Chicago Market Shifts in Buyer’s Favor

Increasing inventory and a fall in the median home sale price is slowly turning Chicago into a buyer’s market, Chicago Magazine reports.

Despite fears of a looming international trade war and a brutally cold winter, a report from brokerage RE/MAX indicates that overall home prices remain high throughout much of the Chicago metro area.

However, there’s been one significant change in buyers’ favor: Inventory is on an upward trend, providing more options to shoppers while also creating competition for sellers. Additionally, mortgage rates continue to hover near historic lows (around 4 percent on a traditional 30-year mortgage), providing further incentive for buyers to take the plunge into homeownership.

Narrowing the focus to just Chicago’s downtown and North Side neighborhoods paints a slightly different story: The median sale price began to slide late last year and continued to do so for six straight months until April, says Mike McElroy, founder and managing broker of Center Coast Realty.

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