Looking to find current market statistics...

[Dan Kalis]

I live in the NW suburbs of Chicago, and am curious where I can go to find a monthly report of market trends (inventory, home prices, etc). I am not a realtor, so I don't have access to anything they do.

I'd obviously prefer it to be specific to the NW suburbs, but would be fine with Chicago or even IL if that isn't possible. 

Where can I go to find easy to comprehend, area-specific market trends on a monthly basis (or even more frequent)? 

[Brie Schmidt]

@Dan Kalis The only thing I can think of is the Tribune used to print a area analysis on the back page of the real estate section on Sundays.  I am not sure if they still do it but trey used to break out the city/burbs into zones and rotate each week.  Each week would feature let's say the NW burbs... it would show home values in Palatine up X% and maybe Rolling Meadows down X% - Again, it has been a few years since I looked but check and see if they still do it.

The other way is you use redfin.com and search past sales in a certain area.  You can go back to 1997 and download the data to csv and then run your own market analysis.