Bart--beware of the optimism....

Case/Schiller is an excellent analysis of market trends and the current bell curve correction in the market is incredible but remember it is for the metro Chicago area which includes Naperville and Joliet. That is a huge region of real estate.

Lakeview has been and continues to be a bullish investment market even in light of the data below. You really need to 'drill down' into the market stats but look at last quarters summary. In other words, I would make the same trend analysis for whatever property type you are considering and see how that is trending over the past 36 months. That will give you a much better idea of the local market than C/S or my summary.

This was a post I made on Trulia a few weeks ago:

Total condos and townhomes units sold in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood were down 37% with 245 units sold in the fourth quarter, 2008 compared with 391 units sold in the fourth quarter, 2007. The median sales prices were down 9% to $315.000 from $347,000 in 2007 4Q and the average condo and townhome prices were down 36% in 2008 to $241,592 compared with $376,131 in 2007. Average market time was up 9% to 104 days. (Data from the local MLS)

Listen to the local professionals and look at the real numbers when trying to make sense of today's real estate market and your local micro-real estate economy. Even these numbers cannot be read on face value. Drill downs are required!

For more information and a Chicago Home Buzz market report visit http://www.ChicagoHomeBuzz.com where this data will be available soon.

Here is my previous Trulia post on Lakeview...

http://www.trulia.com/blog/jim_gramata/2009/01/lakeview_chic…

Thank you for your help. Tom - the market analysis piece is excellent. Thank you!

Glad to hear that prices in Lakeview are holding up even when prices elsewhere in the city are falling (I think the Case/Schiller Index has overall prices in Chicago down by almost 10% in the past 12 months and hence my presumption that prices in Lakeview would be down). If Lakeview and Lincoln Park are going up or are flat, I guess the rest of the city must be falling much more then 10%. Or properties that are selling are more expensive - Case/Shiller tries to track prices of the same house over time.

Bart,

Your question inspired a portion of my blog post yesterday at http://www.TheRealEstateLoungeChicago.com. There you will find a link to a comprehensive report on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis in Chicago. Across the board Lakeview ascended last year. I urge you to consider that real estate markets are very local. And so decreases in places like Miami or Vegas do not necessarily translate to Chicago. Neither do decreased numbers in the immediate Chicago suburbs intimate what's going on in specific sections of Chicago.

Good Luck with your search.

Tom McCarey
The Real Estate Lounge Chicago

The simple answer is they may not have fallen at all. Assuming you are referring to condos, the total number of sales has fallen but the average price has increased 12% according to figures supplied by the Chicago Association of Realtors. Of course, these figures are for all condos (not homes) in all of Lakeview and not just East Lakeview and the answer would change block to block. There has been a lot of press about appreciation in Lincoln Park and Lakeview in the Sun Times and Trib since it was a surprise to many people. I hope that helps.