Sales up; prices steady: State Realtors’ report mostly good news in Sauk Valley
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| A for sale sign hangs outside a home on Jefferson Avenue in Dixon. Home sales increased significantly in Lee and Whiteside counties in 2009, though numbers dipped a bit in the fourth quarter in Whiteside County. (Chris Padgett/cpadgett@svnmail.com) |
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Home sales in the Sauk Valley soared in 2009, a little less so during the last 3 months of the year. Meanwhile, the median price of homes that sold changed little from 2008, but spiked a bit in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Those were just some of the results of an Illinois Association of Realtors report released Thursday.
Single-family home sales jumped significantly from 2008 to 2009 in both Lee and Whiteside counties. In Lee County, that number jumped 49.9 percent, from 341 single-family homes sold in 2008 to 511 sold in 2009. In Whiteside County, the increase was 43.5 percent, from 584 to 838.
Statewide, the jump in 2009 single-family home sales was only 3 percent.
When condominium sales are added in for total home sales in 2009, the increases were 43.2 percent in Lee County and 38.5 percent in Whiteside County. Statewide, there was a 1 percent drop in total home sales.
Tim McCaslin, a broker/owner with REMAX Sauk Valley, said home sales in the region “definitely turned a corner.”
“Hopefully, we’re on a road to recovery,” McCaslin said.
Fourth-quarter sales weren’t as strong, though they still increased in Lee County. There, single family home sales increased from 95 in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 114 in 2009, a jump of 20 percent. Whiteside County single-family home sales dipped slightly, from 160 in 2008’s fourth quarter to 154 in 2009’s final 3 months – a decrease of 3.8 percent.
McCaslin said things could have been worse locally, pointing out that some counties saw sharper fourth-quarter declines. And Whiteside County had experienced a sharper drop (13 percent) from the fourth quarter of 2007 to 2008.
“I took that as a victory,” he said. “We’re holding our own.”
Still, 70 percent of Illinois counties showed year-over-year increases in the final quarter of 2009, said Mike Onorato, president of the state Realtors association. Statewide, home sales were 35 percent better in last year’s fourth quarter than in 2008.
REMAX Sauk Valley’s sales were strong through November, McCaslin said, but the holidays and the weather have slowed things a bit. He’s waiting to see whether the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit extension generates more business.
Comparing local and national markets, McCaslin said this area, unlike Florida, California and Arizona, hasn’t been hit as hard by the foreclosure crisis.
The economy still is difficult, but area residents are resilient, he said.
“We’ve had tough times in this community for 25 years. We’ll come out of this OK,” McCaslin said.
He credited strong local banks with maintaining the area’s stability.
While sales increased in 2009, the median price of single-family homes dropped 3.9 percent during the year in Lee County, from $89,500 in 2008 to $86,000 in 2009. In Whiteside County, the median single-family home price remained unchanged from year to year, at $79,900.
But that price jumped in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to 2008. In Lee County, the median price of a sold single-family home was $74,000 in the fourth quarter of 2008. In the fourth quarter of 2009, it was $86,250, an increase of 16.6 percent.
In Whiteside County, the median price of a single-family home jumped 2.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2009, from $80,000 to $82,250.
On the Web
Full reports of state home sales numbers can be found at www.illinoisrealtor.org, the Illinois Association of Realtors’ Web site.
