Home prices in the Chicago area posted the steepest monthly decline in November of any major U.S. market, and gains over the past year are the weakest nationally, according to a housing index released Tuesday.
The S&P/Case-Shiller index showed a 0.7 percent drop in local home prices in November, following a 0.8 percent drop in October.
It was the third straight month that prices fell.
Over the past year, prices are up 2 percent.
Nationally, home prices were up 0.1 percent in November from October and up 5.3 percent year-over-year.
Cities with the highest gains year-over-year were Denver, Portland and San Francisco, each with double-digit percentage gains. Portland led the way with an 11.1 percent increase.
“Home prices extended their gains, supported by continued low mortgage rates, tight supplies and an improving labor market,” David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement.
Chicago is now on par with where it was in May 2003, before the housing crisis.
Chicago-area condominium prices were down 0.5 percent from October and were up about 5 percent from a year ago.
The index is a three-month average of home prices, as opposed to raw data reported monthly by the Illinois Association of Realtors.
Last week, the Illinois group said the median price of a home sold in the Chicago area continued to rise in December, with the median price increasing 8.9 percent from a year ago.
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