At the close of the third quarter of 2008, Chicago was still suffering from an excess inventory of homes for sale. In the first nine months of the year, the number of actively marketed homes was 1.5 times the number of homes sold. "It’s worse than we’ve seen it in many years," says Nancy Joyce, a Koenig & Strey GMAC agent who sells on the Gold Coast. But the problem is more pronounced at the top of the price ladder than at the bottom. ("Rich people can afford to hang in until the house sells," observes Joyce.) Here, at right, using information from Midwest Real Estate Data, is a breakdown by price range of the ratio of the number of houses on the market to the number of houses sold from January 1, 2008, to September 30, 2008.