Relatively speaking, our market is not nearly as fast as one might believe.

Chicago may have a reputation as a progressive, fast-moving city, but that is not the case for the majority of the metro area’s real estate listings, according to a new study by Trulia.

Per Trulia’s analysis, as of April 2015, 61 percent of Chicagoland listings are still for sale after two months on the market, up slightly from 60 percent a year ago; that’s also perfectly consistent with the national average, which was 60 percent.

Here is a graph that compares Chicagoland’s time on market with that of other metro areas:

As you can tell, Chicagoland is hardly the slowest market in the nation – Atlanta and Miami, for instance, have both slowed more in the last year, and have shares several percentage points higher than Chicago – but at the same time, markets such as San Francisco and San Jose, which are riding the tides of a new tech boom, see less than a third of their listings make it past the 60-day threshold.

That’s not to say that such market times suggest anything is wrong with our local housing market; in fact, it’s likely a good thing that our market is not seeing such activity. The Bay Area’s housing market has been in hyperdrive the last couple years, and some analysts are even using the dreaded “bubble” word to describe where the market is heading. Is it really a bad thing if we avoid such descriptors?