Chicago makes biggest gain in key home price index

Chicago makes biggest gain in key home price index

By Mary Ellen PodmolikTribune staff reporter

10:48 a.m. CDT, July 31, 2012

Home prices in the Chicago area jumped an average of 4.5 percent in May, turning in the best one-month performance of the 20 metropolitan areas included in a widely watched housing index.

It was the greatest one-month percentage gain for the local home price index since S&P/Case-Shilller began charting it in January 1987. Despite the improvement, home prices are down almost 36 percent since the Chicago-area market peaked in September 2006 and stand at a level not widely seen since February 2001.

On an annualized basis, Chicago-area home prices in May were down 3 percent from a year ago.

Nationally, S&P/Case-Shiller said average home prices rose 2.2 percent in May over April and on an annualized basis were down 1 percent for the 10-city index and 0.7 percent for the 20 cities studied. Only Boston, Charlotte and Detroit saw their annualized home prices worsen in May.

"We thought we saw the bottom in 2009. We thought we saw the bottom in 2010. We thought we saw the bottom in 2011," said Maureen Maitland, vice president at S&P Dow Jones Indices. "Yes, there's no doubt these numbers were good. It's all good news, but it is two months of data."

Real estate web site Zillow said this month that the nation's housing market had bottomed, and Chicago-area home prices bottomed out in February.

Considering that in the spring of 2011, the nation's housing market saw five months of improvement before turning down again, Maitland said she'd like to see six to eight months of improvement in home prices as well as job growth, an increase in housing starts and other positive numbers for the economy and consumer confidence.

On Tuesday, the Conference Board reported a better-than expected uptick in consumer confidence.

May's 4.5 percent price gain from April was the second month-over-month improvement for the Chicago-area housing market, after a 1.2 percent uptick in April from March. Before these two months of improvement, home prices as measured by the index had been falling since August 2011.

All segments of the markets fared better on a month-over-month basis in May, but the greatest percentage gain was in homes that sold for between $147,048 and $249,933. Those average home prices rose 4.1 percent.

Condominium values rose an average of 4.7 percent in May, from April.

Last month, the Illinois Association of Realtors said that the median price of a home sold in the Chicago area in May rose 0.1 percent, the first uptick after 49 months of decline.

While the trade group calculates its prices using raw sales numbers, the S&P-Case Shiller index tracks the changing value of individual homes sold over time.

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

Elite Street: Oprah sells Streeterville co-op for $2.75M

Elite Street: Oprah sells Streeterville co-op for $2.75M

By Bob GoldsboroughSpecial to the Tribune

10:50 p.m. CDT, July 18, 2012

Media giant Oprah Winfrey's Chicago-area real estate portfolio is a bit lighter these days.

On Tuesday, Winfrey finally unloaded her eight-room, 4,607-square-foot Streeterville co-op unit for $2.75 million, closing the chapter on an unusual real estate odyssey. Winfrey, who ended her long-running Chicago-based talk show in May 2011 in favor of overseeing the launch of her own network, actually had never occupied the three-bedroom unit, which is in the building at 199 E. Lake Shore Drive. She paid $5.6 million in 2006 for the sixth-floor space but had a change of heart after buying it, and she decided to remain in her massive duplex condominium in a different building a few blocks away.

The talk-show queen had listed the unit from June 2008 until January 2009 for $6 million with no takers. She then placed it up for rent late last year for $15,000 a month.

Winfrey, who now spends much of her time in Southern California and Hawaii, re-listed the unit in May for $2.8 million, and it almost immediately went under contract. Her duplex condo in Streeterville remains off the market.

The buyer of the co-op unit has not yet been identified.

"It was a very pleasant transaction," listing agent Colette Connelly of Rubloff said via email.

The unit that Winfrey sold is one of 13 apartments in a Beaux Arts-style building that was built in 1913 and designed by architect Benjamin Marshall. It has three full baths, two half-baths, 10-foot ceilings, two fireplaces, an inner foyer, a library, a solarium, a formal dining room, a butler's pantry, a wine room, a custom eat-in kitchen, a 1,241-square-foot master bedroom with his and hers bathrooms and an en suite guest bedroom.

Winfrey owns several other pieces of residential real estate in the Chicago area, including a house in Elmwood Park that she purchased in 2001 for $298,000 and a house in Merrillville, Ind. Her primary residence is her estate in Montecito, Calif., which she purchased in 2001 for a reported $50 million.

Flying away

A former United Continental executive is selling his North Shore mansion.

The airline company's former chief financial officer, Zane Rowe, who left the airline in April to become a vice president of sales at Apple, has a contract to sell his 16-room Georgian-style mansion in Kenilworth, which is listed for $3.795 million.

Through a trust, Rowe paid $3.635 million for the three-story mansion in early 2011. Built in 1924, the six-bedroom mansion has 7 1/2 baths, grand rooms, a gourmet kitchen, a lower level with a wine cellar, a three-car garage and a coach house, all on a half-acre lot. The mansion went under contract July 12.

Zillow names Chicago the best buyer's market in U.S.

Zillow names Chicago the best buyer's market in U.S.

By Mary Ellen PodmolikTribune staff reporter

12:34 p.m. CDT, July 10, 2012

Chicago may be the second city but it's No. 1 for homebuyers looking for a good deal.

Of the 50 largest metropolitan markets, the Chicago area is the top buyer's market, according to real estate site Zillow, meaning buyers have bargaining power because there are plenty of properties available for sale with steep price cuts and homes that sit on the market longer.

Within the Chicago market, Downers Grove, Northbrook, Palatine, Buffalo Grove and Orland Park were considered the top five communities for buyers.

Which communities in the Chicago area are the best for sellers? Of the top five, three -- Crown Point, Valparaiso and Munster -- are in Indiana. Bolinbrook and Aurora round out the list.

Zillow's calculations looked at sale-to-list price ratios, the number of days a property spent on Zillow and the percentage of homes on the market with a price cut.

Other buyers' markets nationally were Milwaukee, Cleveland, New York City, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Fla., Providence, R.I., Cincinnati, Hartford, Conn., and Houston.

The top sellers' market was San Jose, Calif., followed by San Francisco, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Phoenix, Riverside, Calif., Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas. Some of the interest in those markets is driven by investors buying properties in bulk and turning them into rentals, Zillow said.