What Were The Most Expensive Homes Sold In Skokie Last Year?

SKOKIE, IL — More Skokie homes changed hands in 2020 than in each of the previous three years, with three houses in the village sold for $1 million or more last year.

High demand from buyers meant median sales prices of condos, townhomes and single-family residences in Skokie met or exceeded the median listing price for three months of the year.

In December 2020, the median closing price and median listing price each stood at $335,000, according to Realtor.com listing data, down by 4.3 percent year-on-year.

Homes sold in the village last month spent an average of 68 days on the market, selling slightly faster than they did a year earlier.

According to the North Shore-Barrington Association of Realtors, more units were sold in Skokie in 2020 than in any year since 2016.

A total of 487 residential units in Skokie changed hands last year, up from 460 the prior year and 444 in 2018.

The mean average price of homes sold in the village rose to more than $374,000, the highest level on record. And the median sales price of $350,000 was the village's highest since 2007.

Area realtors say buyers have been moving from Chicago — especially high-rises — to the north suburbs in search of more room and an increased sense of safety, according to North Shore-Barrington Association of Realtors CEO Jeff Lasky.

"They want to have space between themselves and their neighbors. They want to have space to build their home theater. They want to have space to have their home office. Stuff like that, which was not an issue, a year ago," Lasky said.

As buyers and sellers shunned in-person visits, the pandemic accelerated ongoing trends toward online shopping for real estate, with livestreamed virtual tours and fully electronic document signing now commonplace.

"The necessity of doing the shopping by driving people around to 10, 12, 15 different places is long gone," Lasky said. "But you can even conduct the financing process, conduct the signing of closing documents, everything else, and take ownership of the home — without having to go somewhere to do it."

Lasky said a combination of high demand driven by low interest rates and a low supply of available homes has made for a highly competitive market across the North Shore.

"If you're going to go out there and sell your home and it's priced correctly, you're going to get a number of offers," he said. "You're going to get a lot of action quickly."

Most Expensive Homes Sold In Skokie In 2020

Three homes sold for more than $1 million in Skokie last year.

The priciest purchase was June's $1.255 million sale of a 5,500-square-foot five-bedroom brick home built in 1998.

Next most expensive sale was another Grove Street home, this one a block west of the priciest.

The brick home at 4200 Grove St. was built in 2007, according to its listing. It sold in July for $1.0875 million, which was $13,500 below its sales price from three years earlier.

The third home in Skokie to sell for $1 million or greater in 2020 was a 1-acre Keeler Avenue property adjacent to the Skokie Golf Club.

The 1921-built home was listed in June for $1.1 million and sold in August for $1 million.