How well has your zip code fared?

In the good old days, the first several years of the 21st century, home values rose steadily in the Chicago area and in much of the United States, thanks to, among other things, low interest rates, high employment and a dash of irrational exuberance.

And then it stopped. Home prices in the Chicago area peaked in September 2006, dipped infinitesimally in October and soon started a downward path that didn’t reach bottom until March 2012. Chicago’s home prices, at times among the slowest recovering in the nation, have returned to their decade-ago peaks in only a few neighborhoods and suburbs…Please click here to read Dennis Rodkin’s story in Crain’s Chicago Business.