Home values are holding up in some of the priciest suburbs in the Chicago area, despite fears that the high-end markets were especially vulnerable to the recession, a recent survey of selling prices shows.
”The upper price range is a little soft, as it is everywhere, due to the economy . . . though we did see in the latter part of July a change for the better,” said Margaret Semrad, president of the Barrington Board of Realtors. The Barrington area was one of only two areas in the state-the other in Logan County-to report a back-to-back decline in median selling prices in 1991 and 1992, according to price data for the first six months of the year released last week by the Illinois Association of Realtors.
The median selling price in the Barrington area at the end of June was $199,600, nearly 4 percent less than the year before and about $20,000 less than the median selling price of $219,700 for the first half of 1990.
This compares with a statewide gain in median selling prices of 7.1 percent, to $100,600, since June 1991. Prices across the state ranged from $27,100 in the Kewaunee area to $254,900 on the North Shore.
”We bottomed out last year for homes in the $400,000 to $600,000 range,” said Semrad, who also is broker-manager of the Barrington office of Prudential Preferred Properties. ”We had more supply than demand, and that affected prices.”
Sales data for individual cities and villages showed Glencoe in north suburban Cook County and Wayne in western Du Page County also posting lower selling prices in the June 1991-92 period. The Lincolnshire-Prairie View market in Lake County reported no change. But except for Barrington, every other high-priced area posted a gain.
The increases ranged as high as 19 percent in Lake Forest and Winnetka, to 21 percent in Burr Ridge and 26 percent in Lake Bluff.
A stronger market for ”move-up” home buyers accounts for increased selling prices across Du Page, which as a whole posted a 2 percent gain in values from 1991 to 1992, to $144,100, said Marge Nevin, president of the Du Page Association of Realtors.
”Last year, we had a lot of first-time buyers” looking for starter houses, said Nevin, who also is broker-manager of the Naperville office of Prudential Preferred. This year, she said, ”all segments of the marketplace are moving.”
”The higher-priced homes are finally selling,” Nevin said. She attributed the trend to lower mortgage interest rates, now hovering around 8 percent, which help people to afford more home for the money.
Although year-to-year sales information shows a 19 percent increase in median home prices in the Lake Forest-Mettawa market, to $495,000, Joann LaPorte at Coldwell Banker`s Lake Forest office said that figure might be a bit misleading.
”We have had appreciation more on the lower end of the spectrum,” homes under $300,000, LaPorte said.
