It was the same old narrative for the 2014 housing market in December, according to fresh analysis.

Home sales in the nine-county Chicagoland totaled 7,971 in December, a 3.7 percent decline from Dec. 2013’s 8,278 sales, according to the latest analysis from the Illinois Association of Realtors.

It was not an altogether surprising development, given that home sales in 2014 have universally trailed that of 2013; indeed, year-end 2014 home sales totaled 104,379, a 6.5 percent decline from 2013’s 111,672,

Of course, median sales price continued to rise – at $184,000, it was up 4.2 percent year-over-year – and Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, the director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory, was hopeful that an improving economy would expand those numbers to other areas in housing.

“Significant employment gains, declines in the unemployment rate and gas prices have all contributed to enhancing consumer expectations that hopefully will turn into more housing sales,” Hewings said.

Real Estate in Chicago’s City/Suburban Markets

Housing in the suburban and city markets of Chicagoland largely adhered to the region-wide trends:

• In the city of Chicago, home sales were down 6.8 percent, with 2014 sales falling 6.7 percent from 2013.
• Median price, meanwhile, rose 9.2 percent, and for the year, median price rose an impressive 11.4 percent to $220,000.
• In the suburbs, the median sales price for detached homes rose 8.8 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to the Mainstreet Organization of Realtors (MORe).
• Though MORe did not report monthly/yearly sales totals for its communities, it did report that pending sales in December were up 19.4 percent year-over-year

For a fuller idea on how 2014’s housing market compared with 2013, see our graph below: