Crain's Chicago Business reports:
The local residential market is coming back, but a full recovery is still a long way off — 11.7 years, to be exact.
That's when an index of Chicago-area home values will return to pre-crash levels, the longest recovery time by far among the 10 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, according to a forecast from Seattle-based real estate website Zillow Inc. The Chicago index hit its peak in March 2007 and is still 24.4 percent below that level.
There's more:
It will take at least another three years for half of the nation's 100 largest metros to reach pre-recession home values — a sign that the U.S. housing market is still in the middle of its recovery. Over the next year, an index of U.S. home values is projected to increase 4.2 percent.
But Chicago will have the longest wait for a full recovery among the top 10 metro areas. Zillow forecasts that its index for the Chicago area will hit its 2007 peak in 2026, while the New York area will recover fully by 2019, and Los Angeles by the end of next year.
What if Zillow is wrong and we get another recession in the next 12 years, because Zillow isn't "assuming" a drop in housing prices for 12 years??? This article is a must for those who said "it's always a good time to buy real estate." Anyway, you can
thank the Federal Reserve system for the boom and bust cycles which created the housing crash.
