Which Cities, Towns, and Neighborhoods have the most price reductions?

Today Redfin is launching the new Sweet Digs, Analytical Edition. We’re proud to introduce Tim Ellis as the curator of this new effort. Tim will bring the same independent, data-driven perspective to Sweet Digs that first established him as a pre-eminent real estate blogger, but with pricing data that only a broker—and sometimes only Redfin—can access. He will be joined by other bloggers providing real-time insights on how contracts are being negotiated in neighborhoods around the area.

Sweet Digs is still a work in progress so if you have ideas about the types of posts you’d like to see — or if you’d like to contribute an analytical post of your own — just drop me (glenn at redfin dot com) or Tim (the_tim at thatchmound dot com) a line or leave a comment below. Thanks for all your support, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Regards, Glenn Kelman, CEO Redfin

I’d like to thank Glenn and the good people at Redfin for giving me the opportunity to delve into real estate data and share insights with readers from around the country. To kick things off, let’s take a look at which cities and towns have the most price reductions.

The following charts show the percent of MLS, FSBO or REO listings that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.

First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:

Of the 247 cities/towns we ranked in the Chicago area, only these top ten had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. Straddling I-90 an hour west of Chicago, the small village of Gilberts was the sole town with over sixty percent price-reduced listings.

Here are the top ten cities with the least price-reduced listings:

While no cities in Cook County appeared on the most price-reduced list, Cook makes a strong showing on the least price-reduced list, taking five spots. Interestingly, Poplar Grove, the city with the least amount of price-reduced listings, is even further east of Chicago off I-90 than Gilberts.

Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten Chicago area neighborhoods for price reductions:

Only 3 of the 104 neighborhoods we ranked in Redfin’s Chicago service area had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. In neighborhoods where homes are coming off the market, the majority of sellers are not reducing their price.

Lastly, let’s take a look at which neighborhoods had the least price-reduced listings taken off the market:

Even further east than the city with least price-reduced listings are the neighborhoods of West Rockford and North Rockford, which bookend the top ten least price-reduced neighborhoods list. With their respective median sold home prices of $32,000 and $82,000, perhaps sellers in West and North Rockford simply don’t have room to drop the price.

In general, the neighborhoods where more sellers are reducing their price tend to be lower-priced (many with median home prices under $250k) than those that are seeing fewer price reductions (which tend to have median prices over $250k).