Chicago Home Prices Outpace Nation

CHICAGO—Home prices throughout most American cities have continued to increase, but Chicago’s recovery has finally started to outpace the rest of the country, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, released yesterday by S&P Dow Jones Indices. Earlier this year, the group reported that while average home prices in the 20 cities studied increased 9.3% from February 2012 to February 2013, Chicago’s average only increased 5.1%, the smallest gain of any city except New York. But in this latest report, from April to May, Chicago prices increased 3.7%, and the 20-city average was 2.4%.

Other Midwestern cities included in the study were Detroit, Cleveland and Minneapolis. Both Detroit and Minneapolis have regularly posted double-digit year-to-year gains. But Detroit has suffered more from the housing collapse than other cities, and prices there have only reached a little more than $84,000, still the lowest by far of all the cities. Minneapolis’ average rose 14.1% in the past year but Cleveland saw a mediocre 3.4% increase. And since Chicago has just begun a real improvement, its annual increase of 8.5% still lags the national 20-city average of 12.2%.