ROCKFORD — Rockford Area Realtors has the stats to prove it — 2017 was the best year on the books since the Great Recession.
Steven Bois, CEO of the Realtors’ association, shared a few telling numbers — 4,483 homes sold, a three-month rolling average price of $127,791, and 86 new homes sold — each the best in five years. The Rockford housing market also had its largest volume of sales in 11 years and the highest average sale price in a decade.
“It’s been a long journey but we’re arriving and we’re seeing some of the promised land, so to speak,” Bois said. “It was the strongest year for housing in the last decade.”
Realtors and local leaders including Mike Schablaske, Transform Rockford’s executive director, and Frank Wehrstein, Dickerson & Nieman Realtors’ president and CEO, presented their data Tuesday during a news conference at the association’s East State Street offices.
Economic growth was credited for the rebounding housing market, which had suffered after the housing bubble burst and the Great Recession took hold in December 2007. Highlighted was air cargo growth at the Chicago Rockford International Airport. The airport has reported that more than 1.3 billion pounds of cargo went through the air hub in 2017, a nearly 50 percent increase over 2016.
Low inventory continues to be a problem as homeowners hold onto their property longer in hopes of recovering value lost during the recession. But home construction is on the rise with 141 construction listings in the Rockford market last year, compared to 82 in 2016.
New home sales also picked up, with 86 new homes sold in 2017, up from 47 in 2016. It was the highest number of new homes sold since the 193 sold in 2010.
Bois gave some credit to Rockford’s waning unemployment rate. It was 6.1 percent in November, compared to 7.2 percent in November 2016, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
“You have to have a job,” Bois said. “You have to have confidence in your job ... to buy a home.”
Realtors expect 2018 to be even better than 2017. But there are some “sticking points” they shared on Tuesday. Those include the lack of sellers, inventory and construction.
The sticking points:
• Sellers are fewer than realtors would prefer because they seem to be waiting for gains on their homes. Some saw their home values drop because of the underwater mortgage crisis.
• The Rockford region has gone 40 consecutive months of having a smaller inventory than the year before.
• New construction accounts for only 2.4 percent of the 5,962 listings that came on the market in 2017.
“Bottom line, Rockford needs more jobs,” Wehrstein said. “We need people to continue to be positive about all the great things that we have in our community.”
Realtors have touted a third-quarter home affordability index published by ATTOM Data Solutions indicating that Rockford housing prices remain among the most affordable in the nation.
"That is a good thing and a bad thing,” Wehrstein said. “We need it to be a little less affordable because that would bring the new construction back. More importantly, we need confidence and jobs. We need people to understand what they have here in Rockford.”
Susan Vela: 815-987-1392; svela@rrstar.com; @susanvela