Sun-Times reports - Local home sales surge;

This morning the Sun-Times has an article on Chicago area home sales. The article states "The median home price fell 4.8 percent to $190,500 in the Chicago area. But in the city of Chicago, prices grew 2.2 percent from May 2009, to $230,000."

Now I always wonder where they get these numbers. I run a market analysis on Chicago property every day, and if it was increasing I would know about it.

So I did my own analysis using data from the MRED MLS, I selected all of the MLS areas for the city of Chicago so that I could see market activity for the city only. First establishing median price for the year ending May 31, 2009 and then for the year ending 2010. Here is what I found:

Single Family Detached Homes
The median sales price for the year ending May 31, 2009 $163,500
The median sales price for the year ending May 31, 2010 $149,900

The median price for single family detached homes declined in Chicago overall -8.31 percent.

When I saw that number I thought their calculations must have included something more than single family homes so I recalculated using both detached and condominium and here is what I found:

Single Family Detached Homes & Condominiums
The median sales price for the year ending May 31, 2009 $260,000
The median sales price for the year ending May 31, 2010 $220,000

The median price for detached homes & condominiums combined declined in Chicago overall -15.38 percent.

I still can not find that 2.2 percent increase. So I tried one more possibility and combined single family detached, condominiums & two-four unit buildings and here are the results:

Single Family Detached Homes, Condominiums & Two-Four Unit Buildings
The median sales price for the year ending May 31, 2009 $240,000
The median sales price for the year ending May 31, 2010 $197,000

The median price for detached homes, condominiums two-four unit buildings combined declined in Chicago overall -17.91 percent.

So, based on this analysis I can tell you that property in the city of Chicago is still declining. Now, I will be the first to say that this is a very general way of looking at the market. Property values in Woodlawn and Austin are changing at different rates than property in Lincoln Park or Lakeview. That is why its hard to look at meaningful data on the city as a whole.

When median prices in Chicago really increase 2.2 percent in a year, that will be great news, and Sun-Times, put it on the front page.