Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
“Real Life Investing” with Jason and Rachel Wagner is a multifaceted podcast that blends insights from real estate, entrepreneurship, family life, and political discussions. Known for their candid and engaging style, the Wagner’s explore how their conservative values shape their approach to both business and life. They often discuss their personal journeys in real estate, offering practical tips on topics like how to buy a house or investment property while navigating a challenging housing market.
In addition to real estate, the show frequently delves into entrepreneurial lessons, highlighting the importance of mindset, perseverance, and staying focused on long-term goals. They are open about the challenges they’ve faced and provide valuable advice for anyone looking to head into entrepreneurship or seek the best version of themselves.
Dinner table conversations are central to the podcast. The Wagner’s discuss their experiences balancing various topics that families face, while often featuring guests who share similar journeys. Political conversations are explored from a conservative perspective, particularly when they touch on how these beliefs influence their business decisions and personal growth.
With a blend of relatable stories and expert advice, “Real Life Investing” is a show that appeals to a wide audience, from aspiring entrepreneurs and real estate investors, to those seeking inspiration in their personal lives.
Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
43. The Wagner Report: Arlington Heights Real Estate Market Update June 2024
Thinking about a move to the Chicago suburbs but don't know where to start your search? Check out Arlington Heights, IL. Potentially the future home of the Chicago Bears, the Arlington Heights real estate market has been exploding and seeing some of the strongest price growths of all of the Northwest suburbs.
Check out the YouTube version of this episode to follow along with the visuals:
https://youtu.be/O58prUpJo9A
Have an area you want to hear a real estate update for on the show? Send us a message with the request!
All right, welcome back to another episode of the Real Life Investing Podcast with Jason and Rachel Wagner. This is another solo episode of the Wagner Report. We are diving into a neighborhood town that is kind of near and dear to my heart right now and that is Arlington Heights. This whole episode is going to be just about where the real estate market is going in Arlington Heights, illinois. It is one of the fastest growing Northwest suburbs in the area. It is actually on an appreciation rate has been for June of 2024, has ranked second on the Northwest side list in fastest growing appreciation rates.
Jason Wagner:It's one of those areas that has really gained a ton of buzz because we've had the Chicago Bears just kind of play around, toy with us, potentially moving their stadium from downtown Chicago in the loop to now being potentially in Arlington Heights, and Arlington Heights bought the horse race track, the Arlington horse racing track that had been there for many, many years, and so the bears purchased that property. I guess a few years ago they tore down you know the everything that was standing on that property and they said that you know they were looking forward to building a whole stadium. Well then, all of a sudden, a lot of things happened with property taxes. The bears weren't expecting to have such a huge tax assessment. They were, you know, and it's kind of funny to follow that story. It's like they weren't expecting the taxes to rise because they bought a property that actually wasn't actually operating and the racetrack wasn't operating anymore when they did purchase it, and so they were claiming that property taxes should be much, much lower because they bought basically like a vacant, inoperable property. Well, the assessor says well, we just reassessed it at the purchase price that you just purchased the property and the land at, and for some reason the bears weren't expecting that move, which is just kind of funny. I actually always coach my clients hey, expect your reassessment to potentially go up to what your purchase price is going to be, and for some reason the bears like missed on that part. So kind of funny.
Jason Wagner:But anyways, let's get into what's going on with the real estate market, because you know the bear buzz is a huge thing and it's drawn a lot of attention to the area. It wasn't that long ago where they said hey, you know what? We're not going to do a deal with Arlington Heights. Yeah, we already own the property, but we're not going to commit to building our stadium because property tax issue and school boards were getting involved and just a lot of political jargon was happening. And so they went back to Chicago. People in Chicago built a great big rendering of what the new stadium would look like on the lake and then just last week they came out and said oh, you know what we're actually going to think about, moving a little bit closer on Arlington Heights.
Jason Wagner:And so it's just this. It's this back and forth ping pong action. Honestly, just don't even pay attention to it, because there's still a lot of time here that the Bears can just kind of dangle the carrot for either Chicago or Arlington Heights and we'll cross our fingers. But I moved my family to Arlington Heights last year purely because of my wife loved the area and me kind of taking a little bit of gamble of like, hey, maybe the Bears do come here, it might be a really great real estate play. But let me look at, let me tell you, the data that I was looking at before I made the decision to buy a single family home here in Arlington Heights, because it all looked very, very promising.
Jason Wagner:And again I create this Wagner report, this detailed, comprehensive analysis of these different neighborhoods, so that you can get a good feel for what is going on in each Chicago neighborhood or even out in the suburbs, and making real estate decisions that are actually thoughtful. And having a good grasp of what's going on in the market in my opinion is very important, especially as we kind of enter this more uncertain timeframe that we're in. So let's jump into it. What's going on with the Arlington Heights market? I'm going to share my screen. Make sure I do that for anybody that is watching the YouTube version of this. And so here we go.
Jason Wagner:All right, this is the June 2024 report and let's move forward. Okay, now you can get this report. If you want it, just kind of reach out to me. Anybody can reach out to me, you know. You can text me 847-997-1639. Email me, jwagner@ greystonerealtychicago. com If you want to see these specific reports. I'm still working on a way to kind of get them out on a website. For some reason I don't have that yet. But anyways, here is kind of the latest and greatest, just so you guys know, most recent economic indicators. It's really important to understand where our current interest rates right now is about 7% right now and we're still tracking inflation. Inflation is still above our 2% target, still trending at like 3.3%. So just a couple of things to kind of keep in mind Ar 3.3%. So just a couple of things to kind of keep in mind Arlington Heights. As of right now, june 2024, we're actually at a median sales price of about $420,000. This is up 10.5% from prior year and if you look on this chart you can see back in June of 2020, median sale prices in June of 2020 was $315,000. And so we have gained 105 grand since June of 2020 in Arlington Heights. So we've seen some really strong appreciation rates and it just continues to really trend upward. So it's a great area to be in right now.
Jason Wagner:Let's take a look at what's going on with buyer activity. This is under contract activity. So under contract activity in June was down 0.9% from prior year, which was the 10th continuous month of a slowing rate of decline. Okay, so, if we remember, why are there not a lot of buyers in the market right now? Is because of high interest rates. What I said before was that interest rates are at 7%. Okay, not that long ago we had interest rates at like two and a half 3%. So this surge of interest rates are at 7%. Okay, not that long ago we had interest rates at like two and a half 3%. So this surge of interest rates, it caused a lot of buyers to retreat from the market and what we've been watching is that we've seen a bottoming happen in terms of buyer activity and so we've got a lot of buyers that are starting to get a lot more comfortable with the current market conditions and actually over the past year we've seen this bottoming action that has happened and you'll see that on the left-hand side of this chart, but still very low amount of buyers. But it's a positive sign that we're actually starting to see the bottom happen and then kind of a slight increase in which I would expect we might actually next month we might see an increase in buyer activity from a year-over-year basis. So I love looking at this chart and kind of taking a look at that and keeping that in mind. And then let's see.
Jason Wagner:Moving on to sellers, what about sellers here? This is the new listings chart and this is an interesting part New listings in June was up 3% from prior year, so this was the first month of a positive growth rate and you'll see on this chart here all these gold bars are the growth rates. Basically, where were we from prior year and we got this, the most recent 3%. This is the first one that's been positive in a very long time. Very interesting to me, it seems that there's starting to be a growing comfort of people starting to list their homes again, but still really, really low compared to where we had used to been prior, to kind of COVID era.
Jason Wagner:So right now we've seen, at any given time we have about new listings at about just under 1400. And you know, in a normal market it's typically closer to about 3,000. So we're still drastically down in terms of how many new listings are coming to the market. And why are people not selling? It's because they've got the golden handcuffs right, and the golden handcuffs are. They've locked in low interest rates in the two to 3% range or they own their home outright and it just doesn't make sense for them to go and buy something right now. So it's interesting to kind of see where new listings has started to actually tick upward, but still, and relatively speaking, we're still not even seeing anywhere close to the amount of sellers that we would normally see in a normal market right.
Jason Wagner:So this has caused months of supply of inventory to be near its all-time lows? We're at 1.4 months of supply. So what is months of supply, of inventory to be near its all-time lows? We're at 1.4 months of supply. So what is months of supply? One of the biggest indicators that you should ever look at is how many months of supply is out there in the market. It's basically the measure of if you didn't have any more new homes come to the market, how long would it take for the current inventory of homes to sell, given the current buyer demand, right? So this is saying no more new homes come listing, we will have all of these homes that are currently on the market sold in one and a half months, right, and so this is extremely low. Back in June of 2020, we were at 4.3 months. Okay, we're at 1.4 right now. So months of supply is really indicating to me strong demand, strong, strong demand. Okay, and no inventory Homes for sale. This is a very fascinating chart. Here You'll see how, dramatically, we've had a lot of homes for sale. Like literally right now, there's 113 homes for sale in Arlington Heights and at this point in 2020, we had 457 homes for sale. So that's a 75% decrease from June of 2020. Like, that is insane to have literally no inventory on the market, so we don't really see a. You know, new listings was starting to tick up just a little bit, but again not anywhere near what it had used to be prior to COVID. Ok, how about?
Jason Wagner:Arlington Heights is a cool little area. It does have a downtown. If you ever get a chance to go check it out, in the summertime they do an alfresca, which basically the downtown neighborhood bars, restaurants, they allow you to sit outside in the streets and they have concerts and they have like a nice little grounds area. Literally kids can run around anywhere. It is a super cool vibe and then they also have concerts that are kind of going on there. So check out downtown Arlington Heights. There is a metro station that is there, and so around that downtown area they do have condos. So here's a cool thing We've seen condo appreciation actually start to form pretty strongly too.
Jason Wagner:So single family homes are at 512,000 as a median sale price, up 12.9% from prior year. And then condos you can get a condo for about 212, and that is up 14.7% from prior year. So even the condos are actually seeing some strong appreciation rates. And then you'll see on the month of supply on the right hand side. Both of these at about one month of supply of inventory, so extremely low inventory, even for the condos. Okay, new listings and under contract activity. We're starting to see a few more condo listings come onto the market Still not anywhere near where we used to be historically and new listings I mean, it's kind of the same story that I was just saying. It's just that new listings are starting to flatten out, maybe slightly increase, and then under contract activity still not anywhere near where we had used to be. So the amount of buyers that are on the market, right. So kind of fun to see these charts and kind of understand where things are going.
Jason Wagner:Total home for sale, just no inventory. Again, that's what's going on in the market. Market times are at the lowest near their near their lowest that they've been at 31 days for single family homes and 22 days for condos. So things sell extremely fast in Arlington Heights. Ok, extremely fast in Arlington Heights. Okay, sale to price ratio, okay, sale to list price ratio. That's what I'm trying to say. These are all over a hundred percent. So basically, you want to buy something in Arlington Heights, you are going to be paying above the asking price right now. So everything condos and single family homes both at a hundred point seven percent. So there are bidding wars and it is a competitive market in Arlington Heights.
Jason Wagner:Here's a cool thing is that Arlington Heights also has a rental market and so I did pull together this is from CoStar data. The rental market continues to see asking rents increase from prior year, but growth rates are cooling off. So we've seen the Arlington Heights rental market actually do pretty well Comparatively. If you were to compare it to Chicago, chicago is sitting at about 2% a little over 2% year-over-year growth rate on the rents, but Arlington Heights is sitting at 3.5% growth rate on the rents. So some strong rental demand in Arlington Heights, which makes a lot of sense. It's just an area that has a lot of buzz to it. Right now the vacancy rates are really low. We're actually at 4% here in Arlington Heights. As the most recent, you know, prior to COVID let's see they had been between 6.5% and 7% on the vacancy and now it's declined down 4%. So very interesting to see that you know the vacancy and now it's declined to down 4%. So very interesting to see that you know vacancy is really really low. So it's good time to be a landlord in Arlington Heights, if you have something.
Jason Wagner:And then looking at sale price per unit versus market cap rate, we see market cap rates at about 6.6% here in Arlington Heights. Sale price per unit about 182,000 per unit. These metrics, guys, if you're not really familiar, these would be for more your commercial real estate investors that are looking for multifamily properties, so anything that is five plus. Really, people care about the cap rates and kind of a price per unit on the multifamily abilities that they're buying. So we have seen cap rates and you know kind of a price per unit on the multifamily abilities that they're buying. So we have seen cap rates rise. Call it six and a half, 6.6%, and then it kind of looks like back in fourth quarter of 2023, we saw the price per unit kind of hit its bottoming point and we have increased since then. So it looked like it probably would have gone down to just under $180,000, and now we've actually jumped up just a little bit to $182,000 per unit. So potentially giving you some indication that people are getting a little bit more confident in the market. Interest rates have actually come down slightly from their peaks and so very possible that people can start to pay a little bit more because interest rates are coming down. So something to watch there and that, guys, is the Arlington Heights market. Right, that's it. That's the latest, that's the greatest.
Jason Wagner:I appreciate you listening in. If you like this episode, please share it with somebody. I'm going to continue to do kind of more of these. I know I'm not very good at them right now, but I'm just going to continue to do more of them. Hopefully it brings you some insights into what's going on, into some of the local markets that impact you, and if you want to hear about a market and have me talk about it, feel free, shoot me a message. Somehow I think you could do it within the Spotify app. You can actually. There is something in there that says send us a message. And so send me me a message. I'll actually be able to read that. And if you want to see a specific neighborhood, uh, talked about, I'm happy to do that for you. So thanks again for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode.