CRChicago.com

It was reported on Friday, July 24th, that the residential real estate market has started to recover.

Sales of previously occupied homes have increased for 3 straight months. That
hasn’t happened since early 2004. Median home prices for June in the
Chicago area are up 5% over May, $210,000 vs $200,000 though June is
still below last years number of $256,000 by 18%.

Another encouraging sign is that the share of foreclosures in the market is
shrinking. Only one of three sales in June were foreclosures compared
to nearly half earlier this year.

FInally, supply is now down to 9.4 months. It is commonly agreed that a balanced market would have
a supply of 6-7 months. All in all, we are moving in the right direction and as more people become more confident this is the case, the market will improve even more. As they say, success breeds success!

Charles Rutenberg Realty is a firm built on the premise that it is the agent who brings in the business so it is the agent who should keep the commission earned. We can do that because we keep our expenses low so as to keep the commission paid to the agents high. One key way we keep our expenses low is by not providing a physical office for our agents to work out of on a daily basis. In our firm the agents computer is their office. We do this because the public no longer looks for their potential real estate agent in a physical office, they look for them online.

Well, we are not the only ones who know this is now the norm. A local Naperville real estate firm, one that had a very high profile physical office location, has elected to close that office. The reason? They acknowledge the consumer now does their search online and not in a physical office! This is what they said in their recent announcement:

“In years past, an office on the local street corner was the best way to reach our clients. Today, the “local street corner is on the Web” and it’s there that we are investing heavily in to promote our sellers to more buyers and our buyers to all the listings in the most advanced format possible.”

We have been saying the traditional firms would be coming to that realization for the last five years. We are pleased to see it is now becoming a reality.