Pecatonica homeowner juggles two homes in competitive market

PECATONICA, Ill. (WIFR) - It can become a challenge to find your dream home in a competitive Rockford housing market, but one woman accomplished this while also selling her previous home.

According to local realtors, the year-to-year average home price went up 9% in April. This also marks the 35th straight month of higher prices compared to the previous year.

201 homes were available on the Rockford housing market (Winnebago, Boone and Ogle Counties) at the end April. This marks the 28th straight month of steady or falling inventory in the local housing market. This is almost a 23% year-to-year decrease from last April.

This is slightly up from the 195 available in the market one month earlier, which marks the first-time inventory in the Rockford housing market dropped to less than 200.

In the midst of all this, homeowner Risa Tyler found the ideal place for her and her family.

“We were pretty reluctant to put our house on the market until we found the perfect house to buy,” says Risa Tyler. “It was definitely a bit worrisome to see if our house was going to sell in time.”

Following a difficult search, Tyler found her dream place to live through a home sale contingency. This means her previous home had to sell within two weeks or the deal with her new place would fall through. Because of this, the Tyler’s didn’t have to carry two mortgages with them.

“Once we found out that we did have a solid buyer in our house was good to go. Took a lot of the pressure off.”

“It’s really crazy how little homes we have on the market and how many people are all looking at the same homes,” says Risa’s realtor Nicholas Carter.

Carter says some people may be sitting on equity in their home they may not even know about. Even though the market has cooled slightly in terms of supply, the demand is hasn’t. This combined with low mortgage rates leads to record appreciation for homes.

“If you can buy your forever home and maybe have a similar payment if you have a bigger down payment then it’s worth looking into.”

Local real estate experts say the demand is there, it’s just a matter of finding the right realtor and the right home at the right price.

“If you don’t have a realtor, you know, interview three, and just see what they have to say. What needs to be done to get your house spruced up so it’s the next one sold,” says Northwest Illinois Alliance of Realtors CEO Conor Brown.

Carter says realtors like him have made some adjustments to accommodate the competitive Rockford housing market. Those include a reverse home sale contingency and a leaseback agreement.

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