Breaking Say's Law

A few months ago, Realtor.com predicted that Chicago would have the weakest housing activity this year among the nation’s top 100 markets. Average housing prices in the Windy City still haven’t completely recovered from the real-estate downturn that began in 2009, though property taxes continue to climb. No wonder, then, that Illinois ranks among states losing the most people to other areas of the country, or that some Chicago-area homeowners are taking big losses when they sell their houses. The future doesn’t look brighter. “Taxes are high, the services [that taxes] pay for are terrible, and the debt load is so high, so palpably unsustainable that people have no belief that the resources can be found to turn it all around,” Ball State economist Michael Hicks told the local press last year.

The houses are getting boarded up, no longer marketable homes but something else, a different category, blight.  Chicago will go Detroit, making a bigger bankruptcy for the state.