Every time an existing home is sold in Chicago (or anywhere else in Illinois) it leads to a mini stimulus for the state economy—a stimulus of $28,581 to be exact. That’s how much one home sale is worth to the local consumer market, according to data released by the Illinois Association of Realtors last month. If you add up all the direct expenditures associated with home sales in Illinois for the year it equals approximately $3.2 billion. Extrapolate that to other related industries, such as moving services and retailers, and the grand total comes out to $7.9 billion annually!

How does the sale of a Chicago home result in such a boost to Illinois’ economy? Think about what goes into preparing a home for sale—new paint, repairs, hiring a realtor, lawn care service, maybe some upgrades to make the property more marketable, etc. And once it sells, you have moving expenses and fees paid at closing… There are also fees and expenditures on the buyer’s side of the transaction that contribute to the total. So before you know it, that one home sale has pumped close to $30K into the local marketplace—and even more if you consider the trickle down effect to suppliers of those first-tier businesses.

The biggest chunk of change from property sales in Illinois goes to directly related industries like real estate, finance, insurance and other professional services. This group receives about $1.8 billion a year. The retail trade comes in second, raking in roughly $1.3 billion annually. Construction gets about $789 million, transportation earns a little over $300 million and public administration grosses $186 million. The remainder (approximately $3.5 billion) goes to other resources and services.

Once the numbers are broken down and the ripple effect is taken into account, it’s easy to see how a housing rebound would be instrumental to economic recovery. Not only for Chicago and the state of Illinois, but for the entire country. That’s why many realtors are pushing Congress to improve the liquidity of mortgage lending so that those who want to purchase a home actually can. Real estate professionals are also lobbying to keep the mortgage interest tax deduction, which could be eliminated in efforts to reduce the national deficit. This tax break is considered one of homeownerships’ main benefits and its elimination could be an added blow to the housing industry.