Western Chicago Suburbs Home Availability Update (July 2022)

We've seen a number of national articles in the last few days reporting home inventory is increasing rapidly, including a Forbes article from Monday noting it is pick[ing] up speed at a record pace by 30%+ versus last month citing the Realtor.com July 2022 Monthly Housing Trends Report.  While these headlines grab attention, they can also be misleading given real estate is very local.  Reading further into the Report, all residential inventory increased in 45 of the 50 largest metros compared to last year, but Chicago was one of five markets still experiencing year-over-year declines.  For a local look, we recently analyzed July single-family, detached home inventory trends for the 10 western Chicago suburbs that we most actively track:

• Compared to Last Month: Eight of the 10 experienced an increase from June 2022.  The median inventory increase was 5% - 6% (depending on if the two suburbs with offsetting declines are included) and the average was 10%+ (skewed by a 50%+ increase in Western Springs from an extremely low base).  
• Compared to Last Year: All 10 are down from July 2021 with an average decline of 30% year-over-year
• Compared to 15-year Average: Calculating an average of every July back to 2008, all 10 are down with an average decline of 45%+  

Is the market changing?  Yes.  Do we think available homes will continue to increase with the market becoming more balanced?  Yes.  However, we still have a long way to go to get back to normal in the western suburbs.