Home sales in Illinois plummet 21 percent

Third-quarter home sales in Illinois dropped 21 percent to 31,451 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors.

At the same time the median home price of $190,000 was down 8.2 percent compared to last period.

The drops are blamed on economic uncertainty and job losses that totaled 15,800 in the state this year, said Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory of the University of Illinois.

Thirty-eight of Illinois'100 counties saw increases in home prices, including DuPage where $274,125 was up 1.5 percent from the third quarter of 2007. The number of homes sold in DuPage dropped 23 percent to 2,378.

Cook, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will saw both the number of sales and the median prices drop when the third quarter is compared with the same period in 2007.