Oh, Won’t You Stay?

Joe Siciliano, the managing broker for Coldwell Residential Brokerage in Lakeview, has worked in real estate on Chicago’s North Side since 1989, and though he has not seen real estate in the area boom in those ensuing years, he has found the area to hold a constant appeal to prospective buyers.

“The North Side has been fairly consistent,” Siciliano says. “From a pricing standpoint, things haven’t skyrocketed from 1989 until now, but there’s been a nice, steady, general increase, because it has been an attractive option for a lot of people for a lot of years.”

According to recent analysis of Chicago’s neighborhoods by the Institute of Housing Studies at DePaul University, the Lakeview/Lincoln Park region is among the five busiest in all of Chicago, with home prices in the markets rising more than 33 percent since 2000.

As consistent as demand has been for North Side properties, though, Siciliano says there have been notable, generational changes that have propelled much of that demand. In recent years, one in particular, he explains, is a growing aversion to long commutes, which are all but a given for many suburban markets.

“There are generational changes, [with homebuyers today thinking] ‘I don’t want to spend an hour in the car each day. I don’t want to spend an hour on the train each day. I want to live where I work,’” Siciliano says. “That’s one big part of it – a general social trend of not wanting to do a big commute.”

Similarly influential is walkability. With a property’s Walk Score now a valued aspect of MRED listings, Siciliano says walkability is hugely influential with North Side buyers, regardless of their age.

“It’s very important,” he says. “That’s one of the big attractions of city life, that you can walk to whatever it is you want to do, as opposed to getting in your car and driving. It’s a huge factor for almost any generation of buyer.”

Perhaps the most radical change of all, though, has come from a most unexpected of sources – families are opting to stay in the area. For many years, Chicago’s more vibrant markets, such as Lakeview, Lincoln Park and Roscoe Village, followed a troubling trend. Though the areas were hotbeds for young professionals and recent college graduates, who flocked to the neighborhoods for their eclectic mix of theaters, restaurants and effortless downtown commutes, those same consumers ultimately left the city when they married and began raising families, opting instead for the surrounding suburbs’ superior schools; thus, the population of those neighborhoods remained in stasis, and the city did not grow.

That situation has changed, though, and Siciliano says it’s because of one key trait in today’s homebuyers: perseverance, particularly with Chicago Public Schools.

“Parents enjoy living here; they enjoy the conveniences, all the things they enjoyed when they were single. They think, ‘Why do I have to move? I like living here,’” he says. “Some of the communities say, ‘I want to stay here. I want the schools to get better.’ So they get more hands on: they volunteer; they raise money for that individual school, as opposed to waiting for the CPS to supply it; they push to hire new administrators; and they press the teachers to do a good job.”

A perfect example, Siciliano says, is Audubon Elementary School, a grade school in Roscoe Village that improved dramatically after parents invested their time and money.

“I don’t think it was even on the radar as far as an attractive school 10 years ago,” he says. “But now, it’s a very attractive school, and people want to live there and go to Audubon because they’re confident that it’s a good school.”

Another example of the family-urban trend, Siciliano adds, are the city’s top-notch selective enrollment schools – such as the Walter Payton College Preparatory High School and the mighty Whitney M. Young Magnet High School – where competition is intense precisely because families want to stay in the city, rather than move to the suburbs.

“It’s so competitive to get into selective enrollment schools; it’s crazy,” Siciliano says. “That speaks to the fact that there’s such a high demand to go to those schools. Not only are they very good, but there are now more people around, more high school-age kids.”