Home values still sinking in parts of south Cook County

All over the Chicago area, home values have been climbing out of their recessionary lows the past few years at varying rates of speed. But there’s new evidence that in some parts of south Cook County, not only are home values not going up, they’re still going down.

In six places in the south suburbs, the Cook County Assessor’s estimate of homes’ taxable value dropped in the 2017 reassessment, which is done every three years. In all of Cook County, they are the only ones showing new declines in home value a decade after the 2007 housing bust.

The declines were in portions of Ford Heights, Markham, Riverdale and others, long-struggling places that “the recovery has not reached,” said Alden Loury, director of research at the Metropolitan Planning Council. As homeowners in other parts of the Chicago area have watched their household financial picture improve, “there’s a different reality in those neighborhoods” where prices are still rolling backward, he said.

In late October, a two-bedroom house on 146th Street in Riverdale sold for $25,000, roughly what the sellers paid for it 40 years ago, said Kathleen Reiser, the Century 21 Affiliated agent who represented them…Please click here for Dennis Rodkin’s story in Crain’s Chicago Business.