The market for existing homes in the Chicago area racked up an eleventh consecutive month of improvement in May, with year-over-year home sales rising 33.6 percent to 7,580 single-family homes and condominiums sold during the month.

Meanwhile, home sales within the city of Chicago rose 32.1 percent to 2,057 sales in what was a ninth consecutive month of better sales, the Illinois Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.
However, in all of the Chicago-area counties except for Will County, the improved sales came at the expense of price appreciation as the median sales price for the Chicago region fell 4.8 percent from May 2009, to $190,500.

The most pronounced loss was in Kendall County, where May sales rose 42.9 percent from a year ago but the median home price plummeted 16.3 percent. In Will County, a 37.5 percent increase in sales was accompanied by a 2.9 percent increase in median sales prices.

The numbers were better for Chicago, where the median sales price of $230,000 was a 2.2 percent gain from May 2009 but all of the improvement came in the single-family home market The median price of a single-family home in the city rose 43.5 percent from a year ago, to $165,000 in May.

Price appreciation of Chicago condos was nonexistent, with the median price slipping 5.9 percent in May, to $271,150.

Some of the sales gain certainly can be attributed to the positive impact of a federal homebuyer tax credit that will affect home closings next month, too. In order to qualify for the tax credit of up to $8,000, sales contracts had to be signed by April 30. Buyers were to have sales closed by June 30 but efforts continue in Congress to extend the closing deadline to Sept. 30 to give buyers more time, particularly to close sales of distressed properties.

“The forecasts for (June, July and August) suggest a continuation of the positive changes for sales — in the 16 to 25 percent range in Illinois and in the 19 to 29 percent range in the Chicagoland region,” said  Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory at the University of Illinois in a statement. “Price changes continue to be stubborn, with little or no movement over the three months in Illinois and declines in the 4 to 6 percent range in Chicagoland.”

The monthly average commitment rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage in the Chicago area was 4.91 percent in May, compared with 5.17 percent in April and 4.89 percent in May 2009, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.