Home prices in Chicago have been faring worse than in the rest of the country.
Housing prices in the Chicago metro area fell more than in any other big city in January compared with December. And it’s even more striking because prices in many other big cities are rising. The new numbers come from the Standard and Poor’s Case Shiller Home Price Index. Chris Hueckstaedt of Metro Study researches the suburban Chicago housing market. He says a big reason for Chicago’s drop is the large number of people losing their jobs and then their homes as well.
HUECKSTAEDT: Something that hits close to home for me is the teacher situation. My wife’s a teacher and she’s been let go. So you think around the state of Illinois and the Chicagoland area, the thousands and thousands of teachers who are going to lose their jobs. Is that going to cause a bigger foreclosure issue?
Illinois’s unemployment rate is almost two percentage points higher than the national rate. Hueckstaedt says the housing market will hinge on job creation and it could take a couple of years to improve.