CHICAGO—April home sales in the Chicago region topped 10,000 units for the second consecutive year, and home values continued to climb, according to data analyzed by RE/MAX. Although sales were slightly off from last April, home prices jumped, largely due to the restricted inventory.

According to RE/MAX, home sales for the month were 0.5% lower than during the same month last year, totaling 10,078 units. The median sales price climbed 6.3% to $245,000.

“It's definitely a sellers' market,” Chris Calomino, marketing communications manager, tells GlobeSt.com. “Some homes are even selling for more than the asking price.” And as RE/MAX doesn't believe the market will experience “any uptick in the inventory over the course of the selling season, we don't foresee any major changes.”

The low inventory has made buying a home far more competitive than it was just a few years ago. In April, the average time that homes sold during the month were on the market before going under contract was just 90 days, down from 99 days a year earlier and the shortest average market time posted in April since 2005.

One possible factor in the slight slowdown in overall sales is “that we have worked through a large portion of the supply of foreclosed properties that was such a big part of this market just a few years ago,” says Jack Kreider, executive vice president and regional director of RE/MAX Northern Illinois.

Foreclosures represented just 8% of all April home sales this year but accounted for 20% of April sales as recently as 2015. “If you exclude foreclosures from April home sales for this year and last, sales this year were 5% higher.”

MRED, the regional multiple listing service, collected the sales data used by RE/MAX. It covers detached and attached homes in the counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will.

CHICAGO—April home sales in the Chicago region topped 10,000 units for the second consecutive year, and home values continued to climb, according to data analyzed by RE/MAX. Although sales were slightly off from last April, home prices jumped, largely due to the restricted inventory.

According to RE/MAX, home sales for the month were 0.5% lower than during the same month last year, totaling 10,078 units. The median sales price climbed 6.3% to $245,000.

“It's definitely a sellers' market,” Chris Calomino, marketing communications manager, tells GlobeSt.com. “Some homes are even selling for more than the asking price.” And as RE/MAX doesn't believe the market will experience “any uptick in the inventory over the course of the selling season, we don't foresee any major changes.”

The low inventory has made buying a home far more competitive than it was just a few years ago. In April, the average time that homes sold during the month were on the market before going under contract was just 90 days, down from 99 days a year earlier and the shortest average market time posted in April since 2005.

One possible factor in the slight slowdown in overall sales is “that we have worked through a large portion of the supply of foreclosed properties that was such a big part of this market just a few years ago,” says Jack Kreider, executive vice president and regional director of RE/MAX Northern Illinois.

Foreclosures represented just 8% of all April home sales this year but accounted for 20% of April sales as recently as 2015. “If you exclude foreclosures from April home sales for this year and last, sales this year were 5% higher.”

MRED, the regional multiple listing service, collected the sales data used by RE/MAX. It covers detached and attached homes in the counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will.