It\u2019s been a tale of two housing markets in the Chicago area of late. \u201cUnder $1 million, especially for first-time buyers, the market has been on fire. More than likely, you\u2019re going to have to pay over asking,\u201d says Eugene Fu, an agent with @properties Christie\u2019s International Real Estate. But at the upper end, $2 million and above, purchasers are finding more leverage: \u201cThat market is softer. Those buyers generally have more choices and room to negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest driver of this dichotomy? Millennials looking for starter homes. \u201cIn any of the neighborhoods that cater to them, we expect really intense competition for a property,\u201d says Fu. \u201cBut homes around Michigan Avenue that are historically targeted toward empty nesters\u2006\u2014\u2009those people aren\u2019t buying in Chicago right now. They\u2019re going straight to Florida or Arizona.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Overall in the area, sales are down, with annual figures dropping \u200936 percent from 2021 to 2024. Tight inventory continues to be a drag on the market, as potential sellers are reluctant to give up their historically low interest rates. But the competition for what homes are available has prices climbing, with the median up 8 percent last year. This has been a commission lifeline for real estate agents, whose sales dollars are creeping back up. In our latest rankings of individual agents, it took more than $24 million in annual residential sales to crack the top 100; last year, the threshold was just under $20 million. For agent teams, the cutoff rose from a little over $39 million to just above $41 million.<\/p>\n
Leading the individual agent rankings, Carrie McCormick of @properties Christie\u2019s generated nearly $200 million in 2024 residential sales in the six-county area. It helped that she had one penthouse deal at the St. Regis that alone accounted for $7 million. On the team side, Coldwell Banker\u2019s Dawn McKenna Group ranks first, at nearly $300 million.<\/p>\n
The new rankings:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a tale of two housing markets in the Chicago area of late. \u201cUnder $1 million, especially…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,8166,5386,1818,4329,69058],"class_list":{"0":"post-108130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-housing-market","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-real-estate","13":"tag-real-estate-agents"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114949104854065213","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}