What’s Selling and What’s Sitting in Winnetka’s Luxury Real Estate Market

@properties co-founders Thad Wong and Mike Golden face scary headlines about the Chicago area luxury real estate market head-on in the final @/The Market installment of 2019. But how do the foreboding stories hold up to actual sales numbers and buyer preferences? @properties managing broker Amy Corr provides some boots-on-the-ground insight into the Winnetka housing market, one of the priciest in the metro area.

“There’s hype out there about our market not being that great, but I feel like over the last three years, we’ve been steady,” Corr says of the tony pocket, which had only three fewer million-dollar home sales through the first three quarters of 2019 vs. the year-ago period. “I think when you hit the luxury market, there are some really great opportunities for people who want to buy and be in that uber luxury in Winnetka.”

The numbers offer some clues as to where the ultra high-end market is moving. Case in point: $3 million home sales are up year-over-year for the first three quarters of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018, going from 11 to 17. However, the stratospheric $10-million-and-up segment has been quiet, with no transactions in 2019 vs. three last year. In total, there were 125 $1 million homes sold in the first nine months of ‘19 versus 128 during the same time frame last year.

A few more Winnetka market stats worth taking into consideration: the average sales price is down 5.2%, but the median sales price is up 6.1%. The average time on market is 157 days.

A closer look at the inventory and sales data reveals a clear preference emerging among buyers, Corr suggests.

“What’s sitting right now in Winnetka are some of the older homes,” Corr says. “We do have a lot of inventory that is from the early 1900s, and unless someone has put some significant money into [these homes] over the years, they have a lot of deferred maintenance, and someone looking to buy sees that as dollar signs that they don’t necessarily want to put into a home.”

So what’s moving? Hot homes include inventory that’s a decade or so old — properties that aren’t too new to carry a premium price tag, but not old enough to require major renovations.

But there’s also a lot of action happening in and around Winnetka’s revitalized downtown. Find out more from Amy Corr’s conversation below.