By Jenny SongThe Daily Northwestern

Jon Floyd’s Evanston home, appraised at $1.03 million, would likely have sold at that price in 2004 during the nationwide housing boom.

It hasn’t. Like many others on the losing end of the market cycle this year, Floyd has seen his property sit on for-sale lists for two and a half months and decided to reduce the price to just less than $1 million.

“Usually when you sell a property, you get people to come in and look at your property, and at least you’ve got lookers,” said Floyd, who is also a realtor for Charles Rutenberg Realty, based in Naperville. “Now you just don’t get calls. I’m not in panic mode but I think a lot of people will be. Nobody’s calling so it’s like, ‘What do you do?'”

Evanston’s faltering home sales are a microcosm in a nationwide trend that has economists on edge across the United States. Last week, the Federal Reserve reported “widespread cooling” in a previously-booming U.S. housing market, manifest in lower asking prices and growing inventories of unsold homes.

Most realtors have been lowering prices to increase the competitiveness of the homes they’re selling, although dramatic price-slashing isn’t common in Evanston yet. Still, many homeowners base their expectations on how it was, not how it is.

Property values had climbed an average of almost 10 percent per year in Evanston since 2000, but dipped to a 3 percent rise from 2004 to 2005.

Ed Hahn, a home loans officer with LaSalle Bank in Evanston, says his bank has handled 11 percent fewer transactions this year than in the first part of 2005.

“The economy is not doing absolutely wonderfully,” he said. “Consumer confidence has been low.”

Low consumer confidence has translated into fewer buyers during a time when the market tends to be slower in the first place.

“Houses stay on the market a little bit longer this year,” said Eloyse Amato, a realtor with Century 21 in Evanston. “But this is a slower market season anyway. People don’t want to move during the holidays.”

To be sure, realtors said, the housing boom of the last few years has lasted long enough. In the ebb and flow of business cycles, the market is only returning to pre-boom levels.

“People are getting nervous,” Floyd said. “What people don’t realize is that prior to this huge high of houses selling so quickly, houses were always on the market for 60, 90, 100 days. Realtors are looking at it like it’s back to normal.”

Homeowners, however, haven’t all gotten the message.

“A lot of people who are selling real estate, they’re still inflating their sale prices,” Hahn said. “People are still pricing their homes like last year’s market and this year’s market is a little different.”

New development in Evanston is in a similar situation, with few new proposals for downtown after the last years’ flurry of development plans.

Nationwide, the number of new homes being built fell about 12 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2006, and will continue to fall in 2007, according to an economic forecast by ABN AMRO, a global banking group.

“When you come off a peak, it may seem like a drop but when you compare that to five or seven years ago, it still represents an increase in activity,” said Dennis Marino, Evanston’s director of the planning division. “It was inevitable that the peak would not continue to build.”

Reach Jenny Song at [email protected].