The median price of a home sold in the Chicago area rose for the second consecutive month in June, compared to a year ago, as motivated sellers and low interest rates drove home sales up by more than 22 percent.
The Illinois Association of Realtors reported Thursday that 9,156 homes were sold in the nine-county Chicago area last month, compared with 7,481 sales in June 2011. The median price of all of those sales, $183,000, was a 1.7 percent increase from a year ago.
The median price gain follows a $100 year-over-year increase in May.
“This year’s spring selling season clearly marked a promising turn in the housing market in Illinois,” said Loretta Alonzo, president of the Illinois Association of Realtors.
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Within the city of Chicago, the median price rose even more, by 4.7 percent from a year ago, to $216,700. During the month, 2,246 homes were sold, a 22 percent increase from June 2011.
Chicago condo sales soared 28.3 percent during the month, to 1,405 units sold at a median price of $250,000, up 1.7 percent from a year ago. Single-family home sales rose by a smaller amount, up 12.7 percent to 841 homes sold, at a median price of $160,000, up 3.2 percent from a year ago.
Altogether the level of activity in the Chicago area during the first half of the year was greater than the first six months of 2010, when the looming expiration of federal homebuyer tax credits drove the market. The monthly average commitment rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage in the Chicago area was 3.67 percent in June, compared with 3.83 percent in May and 4.53 percent in June 2011, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.
Real estate agents and economists have long said they want to see several months of both improved sales volume and pricing before they decide the local market has bottomed and is bouncing back. Sales that closed in June were primarily the result of offers and contracts that were signed in late winter and early spring, and in March a measure of consumer sentiment of the economy was at its highest level in 13 months.
In June, that measure of consumer confidence fell to its lowest level of the year as consumers grew more worried about the economy. The most recent Commerce Report on consumer spending was weak, too, and the government reported earlier this month that only 80,000 jobs were created in June, making it the third straight month that fewer than 100,000 jobs were created nationally.