Chicago Home Contract Activity
But the fly in the ointment is that contract activity was down 11.9 % from last year , which of course set a record as soon as people got a grip on their housing plans after the pandemic hit . So things appear to be slowing down a little but the fact of the matter is that July contracts were still higher than all other years and 14.8 % higher than 2019 .
Pending Home Sales
Chicago home sales have been declining now for several years but the Coronavirus really tanked the market in May and June of 2020 . The market returned to more normal levels starting in July and is now setting new records .
The Chicago real estate market had another super strong month of home sales in 2021 . Since last year was a bit funky with the pandemic we should compare it to 2019 and on that basis closings were up 23.3 % despite the fact that we now have two years of pandemic under our belt . And just so you know , almost all that growth was in condos / townhomes which were up like 35 % in that time period . July 2021 was higher than all but two other years in the 25 years graphed above ( red points are all the Julys ) and those two years were at the peak of the housing bubble . So that ' s pretty good . Also , the green moving average line tells us that the last 12 months have hit a record going back to around 2007 . That is dramatically different than the downward trend we were on just before the pandemic hit .
One of the factors contributing to high sales was the fact that we went into July with a fairly high level of pending home sales to draw from but we drew down that backlog . That leaves us with 580 units below last year , although we are still higher than the previous 3 years . So the rest of the year is likely not going to be as strong as July .
After hitting historic lows the backlog of homes likely to close in the next 1 – 2 months rebounded during the pandemic but is now starting to retreat again .
Chicago home sale contract activity has pulled back a bit from the pandemic highs but it ' s still higher than all the other years .
So things appear to be slowing down a little but the fact of the matter is that July contracts were still higher than all other years and 14.8 % higher than 2019 .
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