Why are metro Chicago's home values so weak?

Crain's Chicago Business reports:

If homeowners want to make money on real estate, metro Chicago is not where they want to be. Since the housing market crashed in 2007, home prices here have recovered more slowly than in almost every other urban center. Last year, home values increased nationally 6.3 percent, and they shot up by double-digit rates in two big markets: Seattle (12.7 percent) and Las Vegas (11.1 percent), according to S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices. Chicago, which has languished near the bottom for years, finished dead last among the 20 largest U.S. cities in 2017, with a 2.6 percent rise. With values increasing at the slowest rate in two years, Chicago was the worst again in January.

The local market also has the nation's largest number of underwater homes, meaning an owner owed more on the mortgage than the property was worth. At year-end, more than 135,000 Chicago-area homes were underwater, more than the total in New York and Los Angeles combined, CoreLogic reported in March.

Why is Chicago lagging so badly? Economists and others say the key problem is exceptionally slow employment growth, tangled with two issues most Illinois residents are familiar with: population losses and high taxes that are likely to go higher.

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