Chicago luxury homes for sale down, sales up in the 4th quarter

The number of listed Chicago homes for sale for $1M or higher in the 4th quarter was down 18.9% from 4th quarter 2011.^* There were 908 Chicago luxury homes for sale compared with 1,120 a year earlier. The percent of distressed sales (short sales and foreclosures) dropped from 3.2% of the inventory to 2.3%.

As shown below, the number of Chicago luxury homes for sale in the 4th quarter set a new a 4 year low. Back in December I wrote about how the number of Chicago luxury homes for sale in the 3rd quarter set a new a 4 year low.

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Quarterly Inventory of Chicago Luxury Homes For Sale (red) & Sold (green) 4th Qtr. 2009 - 4th Qtr. 2012

The number of Chicago luxury homes sold in the 4th quarter was up a whopping 52.8% from a year earlier! There were 188 sales.

Chicago luxury home pending sales were up 46%, so sales should do well in the 1st quarter. The average days on market for pending sales was down 15%.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CHICAGO LUXURY HOME BUYERS

You don’t have the choices that you had a year ago. You won’t be able to negotiate as much since there aren’t as many sellers competing against each other.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CHICAGO LUXURY HOME SELLERS

Given that the market appears to be forming a bottom, I don’t recommend selling unless 1. you really need to or 2. you want to move up to a more expensive home. It’s probably come down more in value in the past few years than your current home. As always, if your home is priced right when it goes on market, it will sell in a reasonable amount of time. Luxury homes do take longer to sell on average than lower priced homes since there is a smaller market for them.