Despite a slow housing market this past winter, Chicagoland buyers and sellers should prepare for a competitive spring market. Detached single-family home sales decreased 6.1 percent over the same month last year according to data collected and visualized by MORe.
MORe Board of Directors President Michael Gobber said the extended winter is to blame. Because cold weather has discouraged buyers from house hunting, April is the true start of the spring buying season this year.
“Hopefully, sellers have been taking advantage of the long winter months to make final home renovations and improvements,” Gobber said. “Homebuyers have had several months to take stock of available inventory and will likely come to showings with a checklist of must-haves in hand. Sellers should do all they can to make their home stand out.”
Even though there was an overall decrease in number of area home sales in March, some communities experienced an increase in sales. They include:
- Burbank (29.4 percent increase in number of home sales)
- Carol Stream (35.3%)
- Hazel Crest (33.3%)
- Keeneyville-Roselle (33.3%)
- Lake Villa-Lindenhurst (35.0%)
- Matteson (21.7%)
- Montgomery (29.0%)
- Park City-Waukegan (20.8%)
Gobber said while prices of detached homes have lowered slightly within the last few months, the competitive buying season may cause them to increase.
Mortgage interest rates are the lowest they’ve been in the last year, around 4.2 percent. If your clients aren’t sure if they want to make a home purchase now or wait, remind them that a monthly mortgage payment will be significantly lower now than it was a year ago. That change will help your clients save money each month, or potentially afford a bigger home or a different area than they might have been able to last year.