Central Illinois Housing Market Challenging to Both Buyers & Sellers
Larry Bloyd is a frustrated home seller.
For nearly five months, the Normal, Ill., man has waited patiently for his home to sell. The three-bedroom house has been stuck on the market since last fall, far longer than the two months it took to sell his last home.
That was seven years ago, of course.
“After this long, I have no clue,” Bloyd told the Bloomington-Normal Pantagraph. “I’m sure we’re not the only ones in this predicament either.”
Meanwhile, Philip Blaxton is a hopeful home buyer.
The Bloomington man and his wife have been house-hunting in the Twin Cities for about two months. They’re excited about the prospect of a good deal in the Central Illinois market and patient enough to wait for the right house at the right price.
“I’ve noticed the prices going down. We’ve been watching a few specific houses, and [Illinois home prices] have been slowly dropping,” Blaxton said.
“A lot of the houses we’ve been looking at have been on the market for more than a little bit of time.”
Local real estate agents have repeatedly said Bloomington-Normal has a strong housing market, offering low Illinois mortgage costs and a high quality of life for the money.
Whether residents agree clearly depends on whether they’re trying to buy or sell. But that’s the case with any housing market, wherever you might live.
The 2,918 homes sold around the Twin Cities in 2006 marked the second-highest total since 1995, noteworthy given the national slump in mortgage activity and in the housing industry.
But it took 10 percent longer to sell some properties in Bloomington-Normal than it did just a year earlier. And hundreds more homes that had been on the market for months didn’t sell by year’s end.
“It’s definitely a buyer’s market,” Bloyd said. “We’ve dropped our price.”
In the Twin Cities, an existing home was on the market for an average of 83 days in 2006, according to the Bloomington-Normal Association of Realtors.
That’s a week longer than the average of 76 days on the market that resale (existing, rather than new construction) properties took to sell in 2005.
Statistics that separate homes and condos in the Bloomington-Normal area and the surrounding towns are not available, but, in total, 771 existing homes remained for sale at the end of 2006 for an average of 132 days.
That’s more than 4½ months. It’s the same average as the end of 2005, when home mortgage loan activity was stronger, but there were 44 more homes.
Sellers’ struggles in the Twin Cities reflect issues that have been seen throughout the United States. Home buyers across the U.S. have held the advantage for much of the past year as the number of homes for sale has started to outnumber the shoppers. Homes have remained up for sale for longer and at the same time, home prices have dropped.
Follow the link to continue reading this article from the Bloomington Pantagraph …