Bathrooms - Just as important as bedrooms!

Need a house with 3 or more full bathrooms? You might want to look in Naperville where 43% of houses for sale have 3 or more bathrooms.^*

After my recent blog post, “Naperville 4 bedroom houses for sale“, a Naperville dentist wrote a comment asking about the distribution of houses for sale by number of bathrooms.

I guess it makes sense that a dentist would be interested in bathrooms since that’s where people typically perform their dental hygene. Now that I think of it, perhaps our view of homes is too bedroom-centric. We always mention the number or bedrooms before the number of bathrooms. Bathrooms make an huge contribution to our quality of life! Let’s hear it for Bathroom Pride! But I digress…

A search of Naperville houses listed for sale shows that currently:
There are 82 houses for sale in Naperville with 1 full bath. (8%)
There are 508 houses for sale in Naperville with 2 full baths. (49%)
There are 442 houses for sale in Naperville with 3 or more full baths. (43%)

The distributon of Naperville houses for sale by number of full bathrooms varies significantly from the distribution of all houses in the Chicago Metro Area currently listed for sale. 27% have 1 full bathroom. 47% have 2 full bathrooms. Only 26% have 3 or more full bathrooms.

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED)

Last Saturday I showed eight Naperville 4 bedroom houses. Shown below is the price distribution for Naperville 4 bedroom houses for sale.^* Prices start at $200K with most 4 bedrooms houses priced between $300K and $600K.

Naperville 4 bedroom houses for sale price distribution

The median sale price for the past year was $420K, down 5.6% from the prior year.

Currently Naperville has 225 4 bedroom 2 bath houses for sale, 192 4 bedroom 3 bath houses for sale and 129 4 bedroom houses with 4 or more bathrooms for sale.

Search Naperville 4 Bedroom Houses For Sale

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED)

Tonight I’ll be watching the Super Bowl at a friends’ home in Rogers Park. Compared to neighboring Evanston and Edgewater, Rogers Park has very attractive home prices! I recently listed 7612 N Rogers #2 in Rogers Park. It’s a beautiful 3 bedroom 2 bath condo with a garage just a couple of blocks from the lake for just $350K!

As shown below sale prices for Rogers Park 3 bedroom condos and townhouses in the past year ranged from less than $50K to just below $450K.^* The median sale price was $243K, well below the median in north neighbor Evanston at $287K and south neighbor Edgewater at $345K.

Distribution of Rogers Park 3 bedroom condo & townhouse sale prices during the past year

Search Rogers Park 3 Bedroom Condos For Sale on BairdWarner.com
named best for property search by Chicago Magazine
and Leading Real Estate Companies of the World.

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) Data.

Distribution of sale prices for Park Ridge houses past year vs previous year

This afternoon I’m showing a buyer a house in Park Ridge. The chart above shows the distribution of Park Ridge houses sold in the past year compared to the previous year. The green bars show this past year’s sales. The black outline bars show the previous year’s sales. For both years the price range with the most houses sold was the $300K to $400K range.

However, sales surged this past year below $300K. Nearly 4 times as many homes were sold in the $200K to $300K price range.

The green and black dashed vertical lines represent median sale prices. This past year’s median sale price was 12% below the previous year’s median sale price.

Search Park Ridge Homes For Sale

Today’s Chicago Tribune had a good article on the near western suburb of River Forest, “River Forest: Standing the test of time“. With an average price of River Forest homes for sale in the low $800Ks, many people might not think that they could afford an average home there. Yet, as the chart below shows, over half of the homes for sale in River Forest are priced between $400K and $700K, well below the average.

Over half of the houses for sale in River Forest are priced between $400K and $700K

The average price of River Forest homes for sale is skewed due to River Forest having more than its share of homes priced above $1M and even $2M.

The average sale price for Glenview houses sold during the past year compared to those sold during the previous year is down over 24%. Part of why the average price is down can be attributed to more sales of 2 bedroom or less houses and less sales of 5 bedroom or larger houses.

As shown in the table below the number of 2 bedroom or less houses sold in the past year was up from 4% of sales to 6% of sales. The number of 5 bedroom or larger houses this past year was 20% of the market compared to 23% the year earlier.

Average sale prices for 3 & 4 bedroom Glenview houses dropped the least this past year

Those segments of the market also experienced the greatest price declines. The average price of 2 bedrooms or less houses dropped 36%, twice that of 4 bedroom houses! The average price of 5 bedroom or larger houses dropped 26% while the average price for 3 bedroom houses dropped 22%.

Morton Grove's Metra Station

Today’s Chicago Tribune has a nice article on Morton Grove, one of the near north suburbs. As the article, “Morton Grove: Easy to get to, easier on the wallet” suggests you get more home for the money in Morton Grove than in several of the near north suburbs.

It isn’t that Morton Grove doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s close to the city. There are excellent transportation options with a Metra Station downtown, the Edens Expressway (I-94) on the east edge of town and even access to the CTA Yellow Line in neighboring Skokie. There are lots of parks, highly ranked schools, and the streets are well maintained.

What Morton Grove doesn’t have are good restaurant, entertainment and shopping choices. However, all of those are within 1 or 2 neighboring suburbs. With the median price of houses in Glenview at $485K and Evanston at $438K and the median price of houses in Morton Grove only $275K,^* Morton Grove homes for sale are definitely worth a look, if you’re interested in the near north suburbs!

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) Data for the past 12 months.

Today a woman called me about selling her condo in Forest Park. It’s at The Residences of The Grove, a newer condo development just north of I-290 and next to the Blue Line.

As I’ve written before, I think the portion of Forest Park north of I-290 has a lot going for it. Homes in most of that area are walking distance to both downtown Forest Park and downtown Oak Park. There are plenty of transportation options with I-290, the Metra, Green Line and Blue Line.

The same can be said of the area of Oak Park just east of Forest Park. However, housing in that area is definitely more expensive! The median sale price for northern Forest Park condos for the past 3 months was $149,900.^* In the neighboring part of Oak Park it was $179,000, 19% higher. The difference for houses is far greater! The median northern Forest Park house sale price was $236,250. In the neighboring part of Oak Park it was $416,500, 76% higher!

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) Data.

While looking at sales data as I write my market outlook for the latest issue of “Maximizing Equity” I noticed that there have been more house sales in the past 30 days in Cook County in the $650K to $700K price range than in the $600K to $650K price range or even the $550K to $600K price range. Typically, higher price ranges have fewer sales than lower price ranges since there are less people who can afford more expensive homes.

28 houses sold in the $650K to $700K range as compared to only 18 in the $600K to $650K range and 25 in the $550K to $600K range. Only 5 of the 28 homes were in the city. Wilmette had the most sales of any suburb with 3. 4 of the 28 sales were short sales or foreclosures.

For more in-depth Chicago Metro Area housing market analysis, sign-up for my monthly email update, “Maximizing Equity“.

I just started working with a woman looking for a condo in Naperville for her and her son. Back in early July I blogged about Naperville’s house market in “Naperville’s 60565 Zip Code Continues to Have Strongest House Market”

An area’s condo market isn’t necessarily the same as its house market. That’s especially true this year with financing much tighter for condos and townhouses than houses.

Looking at the median price for Naperville condos over the past year compared with the previous year shows one similarity with Naperville houses, zip code 60565 (shown left in white) did the best for both.^* In fact, while the median price for houses only dropped 4.1%, the median price for condos in 60565 actually rose 6.8%!

In zip code 60563 where median prices fell the most for houses over the past year, the median price for condos only fell 2%, better than in 60540 where the median condo price fell 6.6% and in 60564 which dropped 8.5%.

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) Data.