Now it’s official – Chicago received a high-profile endorsement of its improving housing market from Freddie Mac

Freddie Mac, a company focused on meeting the urgent liquidity needs of the U.S. residential mortgage market, lowering costs for borrowers and supporting the recovery of the housing market and U.S. economy, recently published its Top 5 Improving Metro Housing Markets list where Chicago ranked at No. 5, amongst Denver, Kansas City, Detroit and Las Vegas, which ranked at No. 1.

Of the four Multi-Indicator Market Index (MiMi) indicators for Chicago, including purchase application, employment, payment-to-income, and current on mortgage, employment is in range, largely helped by the 10.67% increase in the employment indicators over the past three months, while the other three are weak. Jim Kinney, president of the Illinois Association of Realtors in the association’s latest home report, commented on the opportunity that the changing market is offering sellers.

“We are seeing a market that provides a lot of opportunity for sellers,” said Kinney. “The time it takes to sell a house has dropped dramatically since the beginning of the year, and prices have consistently beaten previous-year levels through the first nine months of 2014.”

In addition to Chicago, both Denver and Kansas City are benefiting from an increase in employment, placing Denver at 17th, increasing three spots from last month, and Kansas City at 34th on the top 50 metros list. Detroit, a city still in recovery, shows all four indicators as weak, leaving Detroit at 43rd on the top 50 metros list, unchanged from last month and last year. Just barely making the top 50 metros list at No. 50, Las Vegas holds the title of the most improved metro, up 96.4 percent from it’s all-time low of 25 reached in November 2010.