Prudential Rubloff had a great May, and so did the entire Chicagoland area.
Prudential Rubloff Properties announced late last week that May 2012 was a record month for the firm, with closed volume increasing 17.15 percent year-over-year and closed units by 26 percent.
Excluding June 2010, when expiring tax credits were an impact on housing demand, it’s the best month for Rubloff since 2007. The firm’s strong numbers got us wondering – how consistent are Rubloff’s closings with the total number of closings across the Chicagoland area?
To answer that question, our friends at LeapRE pulled data for all of Chicago’s neighborhoods and its surrounding suburbs from all nine counties from the last couple years, and the results are encouraging. Here’s what we found out:
- For Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods, there were 2,089 closings in May 2012, compared to 1715 in May 2011; that’s an increase of 21.8 percent.
- Chicago’s 300+ suburbs performed even better, with closings in the same period increasing from 5,268 in May 2011 to 6,640 in May 2012, an increase of 26 percent.
- Combined, closings in all of Chicagoland were up 25 percent year-over-year in May.
LeapRE also provided us with data beyond the month of May, and we looked at how closings in Chicagoland compare in the first six months of 2011 and 2012. Here’s what we found in that area:
- For the neighborhoods, there were 8,779 closings in the first six months of 2011, and in 2012, from Jan. 1 to the present date, there have been 9,411 – an increase of 7.2 percent.
- The suburbs, once again, were even stronger, where closings rose from 25,918 for the first six months in 2011 to 29,911 in 2012, a 15.4 percent increase.
- Using that same methodology, we also looked at some specific examples; some of Chicago’s best-performing neighborhoods included Lincoln Park (up 32.2 percent), Albany Park (up 27.5 percent), Uptown (up 27.3 percent) and West Town (up 17.1 percent).
- For the suburbs, standouts included Naperville (up 20.9 percent), Highland Park (up 24 percent), Joliet (up 18.4 percent) and Crystal Lake (up 32.3 percent).