Jim Kinney, Vice President of Luxury Home Sales at Baird & Warner, spoke about the Chicago luxury home market at my sales meeting this morning. Jim predicts that the luxury condo market will recover faster than the luxury house market. One of the reasons is that no new luxury hi-rises will be built in Chicago […]

Michael M. wrote me last week, “I was just wondering, is it possible to over stage a place, or go too far with the decluttering?” Yes and maybe. According to Stager Invasion’s Lisa Lynch, a home can be over staged when there’s something in every space. What Lisa refers to as over staging is in […]

Today I met with a woman considering selling her 2 bedroom condo in Edgewater. Fortunately for her there aren’t as many 2 bedroom condos for sale in Edgewater as this time last year and the year before. As shown below the number of 2 bedroom Edgewater condos for sale has averaged 388 over the past […]

Inman News reported today that The Appraisal Foundation has formed a new Appraisal Practices Board that will issue guidance to appraisers on emerging valuation issues in the marketplace. This is important because real estate appraisers play a critical role in the home buying/selling process. The majority of home buyers finance their purchase. Mortgage lenders through […]

I’ve recently had a couple of inquiries about average sale prices for condos in Chicago. Below is a chart showing average and median monthly prices for all Chicago condos for the past 25 months. The trend lines show that average condo prices are actually headed higher while median condo prices are still drifting lower. Here […]