State Real Estate Group Overvalued Chicago Home Prices

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 14, 2011 7:10PM

If you're in the market for a home you probably surf through the Zillow.com listings and study the sale sheets from realtors for homes in your price range and think, "That house isn't worth what they're asking."

Turns out, you may be right. The Tribune, acting on a tip, reviewed median home listings from the Illinois Association of Realtors and found the information they were overreporting the median price of condos and detached single-family homes in the area. The group met with the company that provides them the data, Midwest Real Estate Data, to see how the error occurred and for how long they may have been overreporting the housing prices. It's suspected that the errors could go back over three years. The data from may said the median price of an existing condo sold in Chicago for $299,000, compared with $271,150 recorded in May 2010, when the median price was actually $243,000.

Just as quickly as the IAR acknowledged the mistake they quickly added that individual realtors pay little attention to the data anyway, since the prices they're concerned about are block-specific.