The real estate market — what exactly is happening?

I’ve been updating you on my parents periodically (another update coming soon), and we’ve been trying to convince them to relocate near us.  We’re headed over there for Labor Day weekend, so I spent some time looking at the real estate market.

Here’s what shocked me:  there’s virtually nothing on the market.  In the northwest suburbs of Chicago, very few condos of the sort that we’d try to get them interested in.  There’s a senior housing development, Luther Village, that we’d like to talk them into — but there’s nothing on the market there, or rather, everything is under contract.  (They have an agent that doesn’t list on the MLS, so you have to look on their own website.)  A ranch house?  Still slim pickings.

What’s happened?  I haven’t been paying enough attention, I guess, but I thought that the market was improving and getting back to normal.